The goal of Sadoway’s research is to bring the cost of large scale energy storage facilities in line with the cost of natural gas plants. He said that in order to do this, incredibly large liquid metal batteries will need to be built and the facilities will need to be used in much the same way that flywheel storage plants are expected to be used, as frequency regulators that are capable of dispatching energy quickly in the event of an emergency. The basic principle behind the technology is to place three layers of liquid inside a container: Two different metal alloys, and one layer of a salt. The three materials are chosen so that they have different densities that allow them to separate naturally into three distinct layers, with the salt in the middle separating the two metal layers — like novelty drinks with different layers. The energy is stored in the liquid metals that want to react with one another but can do so only by transferring ions — electrically charged atoms of one of the metals — across the electrolyte, which results in the flow of electric current out of the battery. When the battery is being charged, some ions migrate through the insulating salt layer to collect at one of the terminals. Then, when the power is being drained from the battery, those ions migrate back through the salt and collect at the opposite terminal. The whole device is kept at a high temperature, around 700°C, so that the layers remain molten. While each of these technologies has a lot of lab work left before it’s ready for field testing on a large scale, chemistry professor Dr. Dan Nocera and the company he helped found Sun Catalytix are working to commercialize a catalyst that can be used to split water.

The basis of Sun Catalytix’s technology is a cobalt phosphate catalyst that Nocera said is more efficient at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen than other materials. He said that the catalyst can work within normal ambient temperatures and with water sources as diverse as tap water and water straight out of the Charles River in Boston. While commercial electrolyzers that split water to make hydrogen already exist, Nocera said that they’re far too expensive and require a significant amount of energy to run. Sun Catalytix is in the process of testing an electroylzer that is built with its proprietary catalyst that can be manufactured using PVC plastic. A completed 100-watt system would work like this: solar PV panels would power an electrolyzer, which would then produce hydrogen that would be stored in tanks and then used as fuel for a fuel cell for electricity or to power a hydrogen vehicle. Nocera said that three liters of water a day could power a home. He said the ultimate goal of the Sun Catalytix system is use cheaper solar panels and fuel cells (still a stumbling block) to implement systems like this in the developing world where there is little-to-no electricity generating infrastructure in place and where three liters of even low-quality water per day could dramatically increase the quality of life of the people living there. Development of the technology is being financed by more than $1 million from Polaris Venture Partners. Nocera said that he expects a working prototype to be completed in the next 5-8 years and that the company has already been approached by solar companies interested in having their panels used in the system.

Source: Renewable Energy World

Chromasun: Air conditioning accounts for fifty percent of the demand for power during peak periods in California, according to Peter Le Lievre, founder of Chromasun. It’s an enormous problem and market awaiting a solution.  Chromasun uses solar thermal collectors to gather solar heat to run a double effect chiller which curbs peak power, broadens the market for solar thermal technology and fits well within the practices of the building trades.  

Enphase Energy: This well-funded microinverter innovator has shipped more than 120,000 units for residential and commercial deployments.  The contract manufacturing model is working and the company continues to grow.  There are a number of microinverter startups but Enphase is the only one to reach credibility and volume shipments in a high-growth $2 billion market.

eSolar:  Fifteen months ago, eSolar was on the ropes. It desperately sought funds to build solar thermal power plants. It then switched strategies and decided to license its technology and sell equipment, leaving the actual building of the power plants to others. Since then, it’s signed deals that will lead to gigawatts worth of its solar technology planted in China, India, Africa and the Middle East. A 5 megawatt demo plant went up last year and construction on the first 92 megawatts begins this year. The secret sauce: software that helps improve the efficiency of the overall plant. Funding from Google, India’s Acme Group, Oak Investment Partners and NRG Energy.

Innovalight: The silicon nano-ink developer recently pivoted its business plan and shifted from solar panel manufacturing to panel manufacturing along with liscensing and joint ventures.  Innovalight’s inks allow silicon wafer manufacturers to boost their cell efficiency by up to 2 percent with a low capital outlay. This could be one of the last novel, “new” type of solar cells to make it out for a while.

Nanosolar:  The CIGS thin film pioneer  got started in 2002, making it one of the earliest thin film companies supported by Silicon Valley.  Since then, Nanosolar has used every avenue of funding to fund their potentially disruptive solar firm, now at about $500 million in funding to date.  Nanosolar is shipping product in the 10 to 12 percent efficiency range and has panels in the lab topping 16 percent efficiency. Nanosolar faces the same challenge as every other solar panel manufacturer — keeping up with silicon and cadmium telluride prices and efficiency.

Petra Solar: Not so much a technology play as a channel play, Petra Solar and its more than $50 million in VC funds is exploiting an untapped sales channel – solar panels on utility and power poles. Petra has a large contract with Public Service Electric & Gas, New Jersey’s biggest power utility, to install solar panels on streetlights and power poles across the distribution network.  PSE&G looks to install 200,000 panels and about 5 percent are up so far, according to PSE&G.  Potential for high growth in a new application.

SolarCity: Fast growing SolarCity has emerged as one of the largest residential solar installers in California and has moved into other solar-friendly states.  The startup has innovated in the installation field as well as in the financial field by offering leasing options for homes and small businesses.  U.S. Bancorp has set up a $100M fund to finance SolarCity’s residential and commercial installations.  Entrepreneurs are needed in the downstream solar business as much as in the technological side.

Solyndra:  With almost a billion dollars in venture capital and half a billion in DOE loan guarantees, Solyndra is the clear winner in the money raising contest.  The CIGS thin film solar company’s S-1 is filed and the firm has customers and $58.8 million in revenue in the 9 months ending Sept, 30 2009.  The investors and the company claim immense savings in balance of system costs. But skeptics abound and many believe that the company’s solar panels are more expensive than the competition. CIGS solar cells aren’t easy to make and Solyndra’s cylindrical design adds to the complexity. The debate won’t be answered until the customers start taking their data public.

Suniva: Well-funded Suniva has made numerous technological advances to raise crystalline silicon solar wafer efficiency and lower manufacturing cost.  Investors NEA, Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus have invested more than $125 million.

SunRun: SunRun is a home solar service company located in San Francisco, California that offers residential PPAs: “home solar as a monthly service.”  The company has seen 8 to 10 times growth over last year.   Sunrun has received venture funding from Foundation Capital and Accel Partners, as well as a $105 million tax equity commitment from an affiliate of U.S. Bancorp.  Residential PPAs from SunRun might be the disruptive piece that allows solar to better penetrate the residential roof market.
 
 

Smart Grid and EV Infrastructure

What will the smart grid of the future look like? Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers speaks of a utility-managed system that orchestrates smart meters, solar panels, batteries, demand response systems and plug-in vehicle chargers to serve as “virtual power plants” scattered throughout a utility service territory.

Arcadian Networks: Arcadian Networks designs and delivers wireless communication networks to utilities based on the private (licensed), secured 700 MHz spectrum.  The 700MHz appears to be a better choice (than 900Mhz) is rural areas, since the signal can travel farther without relays and can penetrate physical obstacles (such as crops and hilly terrain) that higher frequencies may struggle with.  The other major advantage of the 700MHz spectrum is that because it is licensed there is not any interference from other sources.  While 900MHz mesh networking solutions have dominated the market due in part to their lower costs, as interference continues to create problems for utilities, and as “intelligent provisioning” becomes more common, expect Arcadian Networks to compliment 900MHz networks in situations were interference is just not acceptable.

Better Place: A $350 million dollar funding round in January ranks as one of the largest cleantech deals in history with a pre-money valuation of $900 million.  Commercial launch is targeted for 2011 for the bold electric-vehicle / charging-station / battery-swap / electricity-selling start-up with an inital focus on Israel and Denmark.  Investors include HSBC, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management, VantagePoint Venture Partners, et al.  Better Place is looking to install between 15,000 and 20,000 charging stations in both Israel and Denmark in the near-term.  There is the suggestion that this firm could be a Google or Netscape-type market disruptor.  But even a dominant role as an urban vehicle, as a fleet vehicle, as a delivery vehicle lets Better Place win big in a niche market.

CPower: With 800 megawatts of demand response curtailment under management, CPower is the third largest player in this emerging demand response/energy management market.  Why do we offer you #3, and not the #1 or #2?  Good question.  Those competitors, EnerNOC and Comverge have already gone public, that’s why.  Like their more-public-piers, CPower is looking to quickly move into other energy services, including reserves & frequency regulation, renewable energy credits, and energy efficiency for consumers.  Last year the company doubled their curtailment load, became the largest aggregator on the Texas (ERCOT) grid, and now claims to provide demand response services to over 1,600 different retail sites.  SCE, PG&E and Ontario Power Authority are all utility clients.  The company’s investors include Bessemer Ventures, Schneider Electric Ventures and Intel Capital.

Coulomb Technologies: Coulomb builds a vital piece of the EV infrastructure — charging stations connected to the grid with power and data.  Coulomb was founded on two premises — that every charge station should be networked and that Coulomb needed to be a self-sustaining business model — they win revenue from the sale of the charge station and from fee-based charge services.  Investors include Voyager Capital, Rho Ventures, Siemens Venutre Capital and Hartford Ventures.

EcoLogic Analytics: EcoLogic Analytics provides meter data management (MDM) software solutions and decision management technologies for utilities. They offer a suite of software solutions that include gateway engines, meter data warehouse, meter read manager, meter reading analytic, navigator graphical user interface, automated validation engine, network performance monitor and reporting engine, real time outage validation engine, data synchronization engine, calculation engine and residential rate analysis API, and virtual metering aggregation components. Their MDM solutions also integrate with other systems, such as CIS/billing, to deliver data to business users in the enterprise.  EcoLogic Analytics was chosen as the vendor to provide MDM for PG&E, the biggest AMI deployment in North America – a huge win for the company. In February 2009, the company landed its second major contract with Texas utility Oncor and will serve as the MDM provider for more than three million electric meters in Oncor’s service territory. 

eMeter: eMeter makes software that manages the enormous volume of data coming from smart meters, providing both MDM and AMI integration for utility information systems. eMeter’s solutions also allow for demand response and real-time monitoring of resource usage, yielding greater energy efficiency and more reliable service, while minimizing the costs of AMI deployment, data management, and operations. The company competes with AMI companies that can provide their own software AMI and MDM software such as Itron and Sensus, as well as other software companies such as Oracle.  In early 2009, eMeter announced a deal with CenterPoint Energy to support the Texas utility’s plan to install two million smart meters in its territory. That follows deals with Alliant Energy, Jacksonville Electric Authority, the Canadian province of Ontario, and European energy comapny, Vattenfall. The company claims to have more than 24 million meters under contract.  That number gets it a spot on the list.  eMeter has transitioned from just providing MDM solutions for utilities into consumer services, such as demand response and consumer portals, following a strategy that seems to be working among smart grid players: get your foot in the door with one solution, then seek to expand.

Proximetry: Proximetry provides network and performance management solutions for wireless networks to enable network operators to visualize, provision, and actively manage their networks, especially to support mission-critical communications.  The company’s software solution, AirSync, enables real-time, network-wide visualization, management, and active network control from a single system and location for multivendor, multifrequency, multiprotocol wireless networks.  This so-called “intelligent provisioning” which provides “dynamic bandwidth” matching network resource priorities to users and devices needs seems like a logical extension of smart grid networking, and we expect this to be a major new trend going forward. Proximetry is currently working San Diego Gas & Electric, widely considered to be one of the most innovative utilities in North America.

Silver Spring Networks: Silver Spring Networks has been plugging away at standards-based networking for smart meters for close to a decade — building routers and hubs that connect via a wireless mesh protocol. The firm has made annnouncements of utility contracts with Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, AEP and Florida Power & Light and closed a $100 million investment from blue-chip VCs including Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital, bringing its VC total to north of $250 million.  This month Silver Spring declared it’s intention to go public with an IPO underwriter bake-off — the S-1 filing should follow soon.  Revenues are estimated in the $100 million range.  Easily the leading VC-funded smart grid startup.

SmartSynch:  SmartSynch’s GridRouter is a modular, standards-based, upgradeable networking device that can handle almost any communications protocol that a utility uses.  Four networking card slots allow a single box to handle ZigBee, WiFi, WiMax or other proprietary communications standards simultaneously. The cards can be removed so utilities can swap out and/or upgrade their networks without replacing the basic piece of installed equipment. It provides communication to any device on the grid over any wireless network, according to the CEO, Stephen Johnston.  Potentially, that could eliminate some of the fear and uncertainty surrounding smart grid deployments.  The Tennessee Valley Authority selected SmartSynch to serve as the communications backbone in its renewable program.

Tendril Networks: Tendril makes a varied suite of hardware and software solutions for applications such as demand response, energy monitoring, energy management and load control. It offers an energy management system for consumers (based on the ZigBee HAN standard) and utilities, smart devices (such as smart thermostats, smart plugs, and in-home displays,) as well as web based and iPhone enabled displays and energy controls. The company also develops applications for utilities such as network management, direct load control, customer load control. The startup has deals in place with more than 30 utilities and had a large commercial rollout in 2009, along with a number of field trials. In June 2009, the company raised a $30 million third round, bringing its total to more than $50 million and making it one of the better funded private companies competing in the Home Area Network space.  General Electric’s Consumer and Industrial division has teamed up with Tendril to develop algorithms and other technology that will  allow utilities employing Tendril’s TREE platform to turn GE dryers, refrigerators, washing machines and other energy-gobbling appliances off or on to curb power consumption.  The GE deal gets the company on the list. Runner-up: EcoFactor.

Trilliant: Trilliant provides utilities with wireless equipment and management software for smart grid communication networks. In 2009, Trilliant acquired SkyPilot Networks, a manufacturer of long-range, high-capacity wireless mesh networks. The acquisition allows them to offer complementary networks, both the neighborhood network and the wide-area network. Trilliant’s largest deployment is 1.4 million device network spread over 640,000 square kilometers at Hydro One’s deployment in Ontario, Canada. The company has been around for years so defining it as a start-up is tough, but it has been on this tack for only the last few years.

Green Buildings, Lighting

Adura Technologies: Approximately 85 percent of commercial office buildings in the U.S. are illuminated inside with fluorescent tube lights. In the vast majority of cases, these bulbs can’t be dimmed or turned off remotely. Only around 1 percent of lights in California office buildings are networked. Adura has created a wireless mesh system that effectively flips the lights off when you’re not around and dims them when the sun is out. In a recent test conducted by PG&E, Adura managed to cut the power delivered to lights by 72 percent. Next, the company plans to connect its software to other devices in buildings. VantagePoint is a lead investor. Runner up for networking: Lumenergi.

Bridgelux: Bridgelux is focused on lowering the cost of LED-based solid-state lighting to a penny per lumen — a disruptive price acheived through clever packaging and innovating in the expitaxial processes of building the phosphor-coated film.  Early this year, new CEO and ex-Seagate CEO, Bill Watkins took over the reins and announced a $50 million funding to finance a new fab, bringing its substantial fund-raising totals to over $150 million from investors including DCM, El Dorado Ventures, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Chrysalix Energy and Harris & Harris Group.  Our sources indicate that the firm is generating significant revenue. The big question is whether they can outrun the big guys like Philips and Osram.

Optimum Energy: Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy in the U.S. and 76 percent of the electricity.  HVAC is the low hanging fruit of energy efficiency in commercial buildings and where we can make an enormous impact in energy usage.  Optimum Energy develops networked building control application and products to reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings — reducing energy consumption and GHGs while increasing operating efficiencies in HVAC plants.  Optimum makes software that dynamically controls the chillers – the enormous machines that cool water for air conditioning systems in skyscrapers. According to the company, there are more than 150,000 buildings that can use their product and if the software was used in each one, 75 gigawatts could be taken off the grid. Adobe has installed it.

Recurve: Formerly Sustainable Spaces. They do energy efficiency retrofits. Recurve is assembling a dynamic software package that will allow contractors large and small around the world cut down the time, cost and errors in conducting retrofits. A lot of the employees come from Google—you can’t say that about other construction companies. In fact, a number of large contractors are testing it out now. Co-founder Matt Golden is also one of the driving forces behind the $6 billion Cash for Caulkers program recently introduced by Obama. Recurve’s next policy initiative: funding retrofits by getting them classified as carbon credits.

Redwood Systems: The company, which has received money from Battery Ventures and others, will soon disclose their technological angle, but the gist of it is this: Redwood replaces lighting wires and regular light bulbs with Ethernet cables and LEDs. Suddently, you have a network in your ceiling that every light, smoke detector and other device can link into. Founders hail from Grand Junction Networks, the Fast Ethernet pioneer turned gold mine for Cisco when acquired in 1995.

Serious Materials:  A bit heavy on hype, but Serious has the beginnnings of revenue and has just won the Empire State Building retrofit project for their triple pane windows.  The company appears to have hit some speedbumps with its drywall product, both financially and technologically. But high-end investors like Foundation Capital and high-voltage staff like CEO, Kevin Surace have kept green building materials in the news, in the public imagination and in the tax credit checkbooks of the U.S. government.  Sources indicate revenue between $25 million and $50 million in 2009.

Biofuels and Biochemicals

Amyris:  Rumors abound that Amryis, a synthetic biology startup spun out of UC Berkeley with more than $150 million in funding, could soon file its S-1. Amyris develops microbes that feed on sugars and secrete custom hydrocarbons for conversion into jet fuel, industrial chemicals or biodiesel.  Amyris claims to eventually produce biodiesel that can wholesale for $2 a gallon.  In late 2009 the firm paid $82 million to Brazil’s São Martinho Group for a 40-percent stake in an ethanol mill project and entered into agreements with three other Brazilian companies to produce ethanol and high-value chemicals.

LS9: The company’s scientists have engineered a strain of e coli with a genome that can convert sugars into a fatty acid methyl ester which is chemically equivalent to California Clean diesel. It’s a completely unnatural act but could lead to $45 a barrel biodiesel. LS9 hopes to show that the process is feasible next year. Added bonus: LS9 does not have to kill its microbes to get the oil. They secrete it naturally and then can live to feed, digest and excrete more dollops of oil. It’s not out of guilt: re-using a microbe instead of cultivating a new generation cuts time and costs. Another added bonus: it is working with Procter and Gamble on green chemicals and Chevron on fuel.

Sapphire Energy: Sapphire eventually hopes to produce hydrocarbons from genetically modified algae grown in open ponds. Conceivably, it could be the cheapest and fastest technique for producing algae fuel. But it’s also fraught with complications. Growing algae in open ponds for fuel oil at the moment is expensive and complex, and keeping GMO strains from being out-competed by natural strains in the open is even more daunting. The company has raised $100 million plus from top flight VCs, including the firm that invests on behalf of Bill Gates. So stay tuned.

Solazyme: One of the oldest algae companies and the one that’s also the furthest along. Solazyme eschews growing algae in ponds or bioreactors through photosynthesis. Instead, it puts algae in beer brewing kettles, feeds them sugar and grows them that way. The sugar adds to the raw material costs, but Solazyme makes up that cost because it doesn’t have to extract the algae from water, one of the most vexing problems facing algae companies. Solazyme says it will be able to show that its processes can be exploited to produce competitively priced fuel from algae in about two years. It has produced thousands of gallons already and has a contract to produce 20,000 gallons of fuel to the Navy. And it is already selling algae for revenue to the food industry. Chevron is an investor.

Synthetic Genomics:  In July of last year, Synthetic Genomics announced a $300 million agreement with Exxon to research and develop next generation biofuels using photosynthetic algae. Synthetic Genomics’ dynamic founder, J. Craig Venter, was quoted as saying, “I came up with a notion to trick algae into pumping more lipids out.”  Venter is a man of action and vision and if anyone can make algae produce hydrocarbons directly — its him.  In addition to the $300 million from Exxon, Synthetic Genomics has received funding from Draper Fisher Juvetson, Meteor Group, Biotechonomy, BP, et al.

Batteries, Fuel Cells, Energy Storage

Bloom Energy: Ten years in the making — $400 million from Kleiner Perkins for this solid oxide fuel cell developer garnered them a stellar list of customers, a high-powered board and a hypetastic coming-out party on 60 Minutes.  Now they have to make the economics of fuel cells work. The Bloom Energy Server costs $700,000 now.

Deeya Energy: A few years ago, flow batteries were barely understood exotic pieces of equipment. Now at least five start-ups have received funding. Deeya was first. It has created a battery in which electrolyte flows in and out of the battery so it always stays charged. Utilities and cell phone carriers that need remote power will be the primary customers. Last year, it started shipping its first commercial products. The products cost around $4,000 a kilowatt (or about half what Bloom currently sells its products for) and hopes to bring down the price to $1,000.

EEStor:  This ultracapacitor aspirant makes the list by virtue of the hype and craziness that surrounds it.  Kleiner Perkins was an original investor but appears to have backed away from EEStor as corporate milestones and technological claims became less credible.  The firm is attempting to make material advances in ceramic powders used in high energy ultracapacitors. No revenue, no prototype, no customers but an obsessed cadre of fan-boy supporters.

General Compression. The cheapest form of energy storage remains compressed air, according to EPRI. To date, however, compressed air has relied upon finding geological formations where you can stuff thousands of cubic meters of air. General Compression, along with SustainX and Isentropic Energy, want to change that with mechanical systems. Both General, which recently raised $17 million, and Isentropic employ pressure and temperature differentials to store and generate heat. Duke is building a 2 megawatt trial facility for General.

Transportation

Coda Automotive: Later this year, Coda will attempt to market an all-electric, mid-priced sedan to American drivers. Car start-ups like Tesla and Fisker have initially aimed at the top end of the market, where price and volume are less important factors. Can Coda, and similarly situated BYD, do it? All the auto market will watch it closely. Coda and BYD also will represent China’s first major foray into the U.S. auto market. Coda’s car—which is based around a Chinese gas-burning car that’s been retrofitted by U.S. engineers– will be assembled in China and come with a battery made through a joint venture between Coda and Lishen. A Chinese bank has agreed to lend $450 million to the battery venture. Investors include Hank “Give me $800 billion, no questions asked” Paulson. BYD counts Warren Buffet as an investor.

Fisker Automotive: A luxury EV, but unlike the Tesla, the Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid, combining a battery and an ICE.  This firm is another Kleiner Perkins portfolio company and uses batteries from A123.  A123 was also an investor in their most recent $115 million funding round.  The car sells for $87,900 and already has more than 1,400 people on the waiting list. Hendrik Fisker is a noted car designer who has worked with, among others, Aston Martin.

Tesla Motors: The little EV company that might. Teslas has shipped about 1,000 units of their speedy Roadster model, opened up retail outlets in the U.S. and Europe, and just filed their S-1 which showed them raising $442 million in VC and reaching revenues of $93.3 million in the 9 months ending Sept 30, 2009.  The next step is building the all-electric sedan, with far more ambitious volume sales goals.

Other Energy — Wind, Nuclear, Cleaner Coal, Geothermal

Laurus Energy: Funded by MDV in an $8.5 million round and helmed by energy exec, Rebecca McDonald, Laurus extracts energy from coal in the form of syngas while it is still in the ground using UCG – underground coal gasification. Laurus then fractionalizes the syngas: carbon dioxide is separated and sent via a pipe to oil fields, where it is injected into other wells to help pull crude out of the ground. The rest of the gases — a combination of hydogen, methane and hydrocarbons — are then burnt in a gas-fueled power plant.  Power from coal is not going away — any disruptive technology that lowers the carbon footprint of coal and eliminates mountain top removal can be a new untapped piece of the energy mix.  It is currently working with a Native American tribe in Alaska to build a UCG vein with a power plant.

Nuscale:  NuScale’s modular nuclear reactor design could disruptively shift development away from the “cathedral model” of large-scale, over-budget, ten-year power nuclear power plant projects. Investor in NuScale and partner at CMEA, Maurice Gunderson suggests that small modular reactors are the “game-changer” in energy technology.  NuScale can manufacture modular reactors on a factory assembly line – and cut the time to develop a nuclear plant in half.   “Nuclear is necessary, doable, and the markets are gargantuan,” adds Gunderson.  Whether nuclear belongs on a greentech list always results in vigorous debate.

Nordic Wind Power: With funding from Khosla Ventures, NEA and Novus Energy Partners, they are the only wind turbine company in the U.S. to get a DOE loan guarantee — $16 million under the innovative renewable energy program.  Nordic also received “significant” funding from Goldman Sachs in 2007.  Their innovative 1-megawatt 2-blade turbine design challenges the traditional wind turbine design paradigm.

Potter Drilling: Geothermal provided 4.5 percent of California’s power in 2007 and advocates say that more power could be extracted, even in non-geothermal hot spots, from underneath the ground. The problem has been getting to it economically and safely. Potter, founded by oil industry alums, has come up with a way to drill that’s five times as fast and less costly. Google.org is one of its investors.

Ze-Gen: Ze-Gen dips organic landfill waste into molten iron and turns it into biogas. The architecture of the system eliminates many of the inefficiencies associated with biomass. It has a pilot plant and raised $20 million in a second round last year. The big challenge is in getting a production plant off the ground.

Water

Oasys: This water startup is built around research from Yale with $10 million in venture funds to see if its novel desalination technique, which exploits fundamental chemistry and waste heat, can go commercial.  The company claims its “forward osmosis” process can desalinate water for about half the cost of standard reverse osmosis desalination.

Miox:  The disruptive aspect of Miox’ business plan is distributed water purification instead of the current centralized model.  The company makes onsite water purification systems for gray water remediation and water recycling. Distributed water purification could, potentially, open up a flood of investment into water.  Miox’s trick is in making the process cost-effective. The company’s system can purify a given amount of liquid with a volume of salt that is one-fourth the amount of liquid chlorine that would be required.  Investors include Sierra Venutres, DCM, and Flywheel Ventures.

Purfresh: If you drink bottled water or eat bagged organic lettuce, you’ve encountered Purfresh. The company, backed by Foundation Capital, kills microbes with ozinated water. Growers use it to keep food fresh on the way to store shelves and bottlers use it to sterilize plastic. Orders go up every time an e coli outbreak occurs. Like Serious Materials, Purfresh is expanding from its base to become a full-service water and food company.

Green IT

Hara: Originally funded in 2008 by Silicon Valley heavyweight VC, Kleiner Perkins, Hara has been making good headway attacking the nascent carbon accounting and management software space. It’s still early days for this market but a very large base of enterprise companies are actively looking for software solutions that provide actionable information, metrics, recommendations and reporting regarding their carbon footprints. Hara has amassed an impressive list of customers to date, including Coca Cola, News Corp., Akamai, Intuit, Brocade and Safeway.

Sandforce: The company has created a chip that makes it possible for search companies, banks and other companies with large datacenters to swap out storage systems made out of hard drives with drives made of flash memory, which only use about 5 percent of the power. In real terms, that means dropping the power budget for storage systems from $50,000 for five years to $250. Storage giant EMC has invested.

 Source: GreenTech Media

 Various storage systems incorporated with solar tower electricity generation systems were developed and the most advanced of them was installed and tested in California. This system, Solar Two, generated 10MW electricity using an eutectic molten nitrate salts mixture pumped and piped from a ground-based cold tank to a receiver mounted on the top of a tower. The hot salt from the receiver is then piped to a second, hot tank on the ground. In a secondary loop, the hot salt flows through a heat exchanger to generate steam and returns to the cold tank. The third loop includes the steam generator, which supplies steam to a steam turbine electricity generator. This plant was closed on 1999. Now Sener is trying to do something similar in Spain.

The most common storage technology in use (following the inefficient oil storage tanks solution that is being used at the SEGS plants in California) is the molten salt two-tank system, which provides a feasible storage capacity and is considered to have low to moderate associated risks. Molten salt that will be used for storage as such is bankable (as molten salt is being used for a long time in the chemical industry), but the integration of this kind of storage system to the solar system – is risky.  Concentrated solar thermal power plants have specific requirements for storage that are not well known in the chemical industry. For example: working under thermal cycling conditions; heating and cooling; temperature changing periodically; even design the hot and cold tanks is a challenge; Not to speak about the pipes and the heat exchangers. Another problem is freezing at night. But the main risk is that it is a big step from the existing technology in the chemical industry to that is required by the solar plants, especially in size – going up in scale, since in the chemical industry relatively small amounts of molten salts are being used.   On the other hand, storage contributes not only by increasing operation hours, but also enhancing the overall efficiency, as the plant is working more hours close to the design point. 

At Acciona’s Nevada parabolic trough plant there is no storage (only for about 30 minutes, which is achieved by the fluid that is in the pipes). On the other hand, at the parabolic trough plants of Andasol One & Two – FlagSol (Solar Millennium’s subsidiary) together with ACS/Cobra developed thermal storage based on molten salt. This system is being working for almost two years, probably with a lot of obstacles to deal with, like freezing issues (the freezing point of the chosen nitrates is probably 220ºC), corrosion, blocking, purity of the salt, problems with materials that are in contact with the salt, and a lot of integration and control issues. However, the operators (ACS/Cobra) are gaining much experience and claim to be able to overcome most obstacles. 

 Another risk related to incorporating storage is how much downtime (forced outage) will the plant experience. As a worth case scenario one has to assume up to 10 percent (36.5 days) down, although some plants have almost no downtime due to troubles with storage systems. Thermal storage allows project developers to maximize the value of the solar thermal facility’s output for time of use pricing verses the cost of producing that electricity. Designing a facility to sell the largest amount of output does not necessarily make that design the one with the best return on capital. Sometimes it is preferred, for example, to store all of the thermal energy produced in the morning instead of directing only part to the storage and part to produce electricity for immediate sale. The design point as well as operation strategies are of utmost importance especially when thermal storage is incorporated with the solar thermal plant. However, reducing drastically the capital cost of thermal storage is key to the commercial deployment of the technology.

• Addressing the challenges of grid integration for renewables from the transmission perspective.

• Distributed energy generation as key to deploying advanced clean energy technologies.

• Adopting the grid to be able to integrate different unstable sources of energy, incorporate energy storage, distribution automation and distribution management systems and improving frequency stability of grids that incorporate remote clean energy sources.

• Applying smart grid vision globally – a global link which uses AC and DC transmissions.

• Is not it a shame wasting hundreds of millions during the last decade on subsidizing PV integrators, instead of investing these money in developing new technologies that will not require governmental incentives and replace all use of fossil fuel for electricity production and transportation?

• Presenting the ‘big picture’ beyond subsidies and feed-in tariffs – insight into the future of developing new technologies and evaluating whether technological breakthroughs are realistic for achieving grid parity and how we can make it happen (Manhattan-like clean energy projects).

Samid also encouraged Lenders to take the risks in financing renewable energy projects that are based on new technologies, which are not defined yet as “bankable”, while presenting the main risk factors and mitigation required:

 • Technology, which should be mitigated by proven design or tested Equipment (especially when it’s not a proven technology). • Suppliers, which should be mitigated by their references, track record, experience and financial strength and warrantees.

• EPC, which could be mitigated by performance guarantee and ongoing measurements of performance & degradation.

• Developers, especially their credibility, track record and risk profile.

• O&M, which should be mitigated by track record of the contractor, warranties for availability, performance guarantees & degradation, spare parts management and O&M budget.

• Operation strategy & Performance model for the lifetime of the project.

• Financial model, which should include exposure to risks involved in fluctuations in Interest rates, currencies rates, seasonal factors etc., while especially it’s important to make sure that low probability scenarios will still result in sufficient revenues to repay the loan.

 • Solar resources, especially the basis and accuracy of historic irradiation data and assessment of future irradiation data.

• Infrastructure, Permits and Licenses, including space constrains, access roads, availability of fossil fuels, water availability, flood protection, transmission facilities, geotechnical & environmental assessments.

• Revenue which is controlled by all the above and the Power Purchase Agreement [PPA].

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(*) The conference brought together major leaders on clean & renewable energy — technology experts, academic researchers, regulators, policy makers, consumers, financial experts, industry leaders, utilities, start-up companies along with influences from the US, Europe & Africa.

• Amnon Samid was moderating a panel with key decision makers analyzing the current situation of clean & renewable energy industry in Israel

United Technology subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, has combined its liquid rocket engine heat transfer technology and molten salt handling expertise to develop a unique tower receiver technology with thermal storage capabilities – for which SolarReserve is the exclusive license holder.

Another key ingredient is SolarReserve’s founding partner – the US Renewables Group, a US$575 million private equity firm exclusively focused on renewable power and clean fuel projects.

And finally: the team.  SolarReserve’s blend of professionals from the energy, technology and finance industries are proving to be a knockout combination.” [Source: CSP TODAY].

Competition:

 Parabolic troughs, which have been in operation since the mid-1980’s, are currently the most commercial technology and hence the main competitor for any solar thermal technology. Parabolic trough plants have proven a maximum efficiency of 21% (with an average of 12% to 15%) for the conversion of direct solar radiation into grid electricity. While the plants in California uses synthetic oil as heat transfer fluid in the collectors, efforts to achieve direct steam generation within the absorber tubes in order to reduce costs further did not achieve a viable system so far.

 Another option is the approximation of the parabolic trough by segmented mirrors according to the principle of Fresnel. Although this will reduce efficiency, it shows a considerable potential for cost reduction. The close arrangement of the mirrors requires less land and provides a partially shaded, useful space below.

 Despite improvements in performance of the parabolic troughs new generations, the cost of electricity with solar only is relatively high.  Hence lower limit of costs (through Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) or competition) will not enable this technology to be competitive for the long run. For larger scale power generation, Central receivers, which utilize a collection of heliostats – mirrors which track the sun and concentrate the radiation onto a central receiver located at the top of a tower – hold out a huge potential for lower costs. Concentrating the sunlight enables heating a heat transfer fluid up to 1200ºC and higher. Today, molten salt or air or water is used to absorb the heat in the receiver. The heat may be used for steam generation or making use of the full potential of this high-temperature technology – to drive gas turbines. For gas turbine operation, the air to be heated must pass through a pressurized solar receiver with a solar window. Combined cycle power plants (like Aora’s) require about 30% less collector area than equivalent steam cycle.

 Another option is based on Parabolic Dish, which are relatively small concentrators that have a motor-generator or a turbo-generator in the focal point of the reflector. This generator may be based on Stirling engine or a gas turbine. Because of their size, they are particularly suited for decentralized electricity supply and remote stand alone systems. Dishes up to 400m² have been built and other even larger are being currently designed. Although significant progress has been made on most major components including the high performance dish, it is too early to determine whether the promises of developing a simple, low cost and very reliable engine will be realized by new designs. Moreover, this technology is inherently nondispatchable without storage or fuel backup, so can not reach utility’s dispatch requirements. 

 Translation from Hebrew

This Conference is an opportunity to think about how to make the impossible possible. How do we transform a dream into reality, a crisis into an opportunity? ……Therefore, tonight I would like to talk to you about one of the more significant matters on the global agenda: eliminating the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil. We all know the simple truth: dependence on oil endangers the world. It is a threat to our security, our economy and the environment. Our security, because dependence on fossil fuels strengthens the dark regimes that encourage instability and fund terror with their petrodollars. Our economy, because if we don’t develop alternative energy sources, the demand for fossil fuels will increase and the supply will decrease. This will lead to an increase in prices, which in turn will adversely affect global economic development in countries that import fossil fuels – which is the majority of countries. This will cause serious economic harm. Environmentally, because the pollution from fossil fuels poisons the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and the food that we eat. Our dependence on oil harms us and the earth every day, and has done so for decades. To counteract all this, we must set a goal: we must free ourselves from our dependence on oil. I know it seems impossible, but believe me – it is possible. Sometimes all it takes is one or two inventions to make a breakthrough and change the world. Look at salt during the 19th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century, salt was a luxury item used to preserve food. Caravans of camels carried salt through the Sahara Desert, and the salt was traded for gold. Entire empires became rich trading salt, because of the world’s dependence on salt. But two inventions were made. The first was the canning process and the second was refrigeration, and all at once the world’s huge dependence on salt was eliminated. As a result, the salt empires crashed almost overnight. Is Israel the country that will discover the breakthrough that will free the world of its dependence on fossil fuels? I believe so because Israel has two significant resources that provide us with a good chance of doing so. • We have the minds and the hearts. • The capability, the will. Israel is very advanced in the technological fields – agro-tech, hi-tech, nanotechnology, solar energy, battery technologies and renewable energies. Naturally, we are leading candidates to create a global revolution in the clean energy field because of this capacity. Here is the essence of what I’m saying. It’s possible to change the world. The greatest changes in man’s history occurred when there was not only a technological change, but a conceptual change. For many generations, hundreds of thousands of years, man was a hunter-gather. He went to seek out food. He had to go great distances, chase animals to get the protein he needed, or to look for berries or fruit to gather so he’d have the nutrients that were needed for life. These nomadic hunter-gatherer patterns changed one day, because man realized that the food was right underneath his feet. And that was the day that agriculture was born. We are hunter-gatherers for energy. We go to the depths of the oceans. We seek energy from the bowels of the Earth and distant lands. But the energy is right under our noses. It’s all around us. It’s bountiful. It’s in the sun. It’s in the wind. It’s in the water. We just have to tap it.

I think we have the capacity to develop this. Our Nobel Prize winners were mentioned – yes, we have per capita more Nobel Prize winners than any other country, than any other people. We have the second largest concentration of technological capacity; in terms of venture capital, the highest per capita by far. We have scientific publications and we have patents in abundance. So we have the capacity, including in these areas – the development of energy from hydrogen, from water, the development of solar energy and other energies. We have the brains, but we also have the will. Because think what this will mean for our national security. Think of what it would mean for our future if the world ended its dependence on fossil fuels, and especially on oil. By changing this dependence, we can change the world. I don’t know which technology will triumph. Yesterday, Ray Kurzweil, who hasn’t changed a bit in 35 years – I remember you from MIT, Ray – you gave us a course on entrepreneurship and you proceeded to be an entrepreneur, like Shimon Peres, in your own great scientific capacities. Yesterday you said that the efficiency of solar energy doubles every two years. You said that we live in a very brief generation that will develop the energy of the proximate future. If that’s the case, then we’re in good shape. But I say let’s make it happen faster. If we have placed a man on the moon, surely we can harness the energy of the sun.

 What I propose to do today is to establish a nation commission of scientists, engineers, business and government people to set a goal that within ten years, we’ll have a practical, clean, efficient substitute for oil. I think it’s possible. I think we can make the impossible possible. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have never been accused of being a disciple of government intervention. However, sometimes the private market simply cannot create the critical mass of activities needed to make such a big change. Sometimes it needs a push and support from the government. Finding an alternative to oil is a critical matter for the State of Israel must deal with – with regard to geopolitics, security concerns, environmental concerns, to secure the future and to change the world’s order of priorities. Therefore, I repeat my announcement that I am going to establish a national commission comprised of scientists, manufacturers, engineers, businesspeople and government officials, with the goal of formulating a practical plan for efficient development in technologies and engineering in order to replace fossil fuels within the decade. I ask the minds and talents who are here, and around the world, to help.

It is not in our interest alone. The resources need not be exclusively Israel’s. Most of the world shares this interest. But Israel has a strong and clear interest in achieving this. “For out of Zion will come Torah”: We are commanded to bring a new light to the world. God willing, with your help and the help of many others around the world, we will make the impossible possible. Thank you.

Reps. Jay Inslee of Washington and Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts are preparing a bill that would require utilities to purchase small-scale renewable energy from developers at rates equal to the cost of production plus a premium. The so-called feed-in tariffs proposal would set European-style guarantees for investors that many credit for a recent boom in solar energy in Germany.

 “We have some brilliant Americans with brilliant business plans with brilliant technologies, but they don’t have financing,” Inslee said at a briefing last week on Capitol Hill. “The charm of the feed-in tariff is solid, take-it-to-the-bank security and confidence for the investing community.”

Proponents say feed-in tariffs can be more effective than renewable-energy standards, such as the one included in the House climate bill by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, because they offer staggered rate incentives for each energy source based on current production costs. The initial rate that utilities would pay for solar energy, for example, would be higher than payments for less-expensive wind energy.

Backers of the bill also point to the model in Germany, where, after passing its own Renewable Energy Sources Act in 2000, Germany was able to become the world’s largest market for photovoltaic systems and wind energy and more than doubled its supply of renewable energy between 2000 and 2007.

• PVPowered of Bend will receive up to $3 million to optimize interconnections across PV module technologies through systems integration,
• Petra Solar of South Plainfield, NJ, which will get up to $2.9 million to improve reliability and resiliency in eight states so that high levels of PV integration can be adapted,
• Princeton Power of Princeton, NJ will be awarded up to $2.8 million to lower manufacturing costs through integrated controls for energy storage and develop inverter designs,
• Apollo Solar of Bethel, CT, will get $1.5 million to create inverters using energy storage and two-way communications between solar electrical systems and utilities,
• Florida Solar Energy Center/UCF, will get up to $1.3 million to figure out how to include higher PV penetration levels in larger electrical systems.

AS much as all these projects are important – they are Not getting us closer to be free from oil addiction…

Energy Secretary Steven Chu worry about security. “If you want to create mischief one very good way to create a great deal of mischief is to actually bring down a smart grid system. This system has to be incredibly secure,” Chu said.

 On the other hand, Chu says that the current grid stands in the way of increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar that “will need a system that can dispatch power here, there and everywhere on a very quick basis.”

According to an article at Associate Press today, the “smart grid” has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it’s essential to boost development of wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and to tackle climate change. What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and appliances that adjust automatically depending on the cost of power; a world where a water heater may get juice from a neighbor’s rooftop solar panel, where on a scorching hot day a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and the next sends electricity back to the grid to help head off a brownout. It is a world where utilities get instant feedback on a transformer outage, shift easily among energy sources, integrating wind and solar energy with electricity from coal-burning power plants, and go into homes and businesses to automatically adjust power use based on prearranged agreements.

However, without development of NEW clean energy technologies to transfer over the smart grid and without and robust technologies to protect the smart system against intrusion and evil shut down – the game is not worth the candle……

Every nation on this planet is at risk.  And just as no one nation is responsible for climate change, no one nation can address it alone.  ….And it is why we have gathered again here today. –President Barack Obama. 

 Al Gore:  There has never been a better time than now for making the change we need in dealing with the climate crisis …  This is truly a new era of hope and opportunity for our cause.

We welcome individuals to contribute their solutions, ideas, words, and images.

Stay alert: Details will come soon….Kick-off is expected in February 2010.

www.energysummit2010.com