Greentech Media:Green Light Blog

Korea Wants 30% of Smart Grid Worldwide

2009-11-20T21:41:52+00:00

The South Korean government has declared its intention to help its home industries win 30 percent of the global smart grid market, Reuters reported Friday.

But to start, the government will spend a relatively small 37 billion won ($32 million) to test smart grid systems from a consortium including SK Telecom, LG Electronics, Hyundai Heavy Industries and national utility Korea Electric Power Corp., or KEPCO.

The test will on be on Jeju Island, a volcanic island between Korea and Japan with about 565,000 residents. State-run Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning will coordinate the project, which is expected to start next year.

The project will include a "smart transportation" system aimed at power and communications for electric vehicles, as well as a "smart renewable" side to integrate solar and wind energy, Reuters reported. It will also include two-way communications between the utility and customers to improve energy efficiency.

Eventually, the government wants to see its 68 trillion won ($58.3 billion) electricity market connected in a smart grid, it announced in July. That could save it about $10 billion a year in energy import costs, according to the country's Ministry of Knowledge Economy (see Korea Times).

But Korea's declared goal to snap up nearly one-third of the global smart grid market – which could be anywhere from $20 billion to $160 billion or so over the coming decades, according to various estimates – might get more attention.

At the same time, Korea is being approached by smart grid-related offers from overseas. General Electric wants to deploy about 300,000 smart meters with Korea's NURI Telecom, and San Jose, Calif.-based Echelon is working with Samsung electronics for devices that monitor energy use in apartments in Korea, as well as in China (see GE Dives Into Korean Smart Meter Market With NURI Telecom and Echelon Beefs Up LonWorks).

On the distribution grid side, Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor is selling its superconducting wires to Korea's LS Cable for a project it's doing with KEPCO (see Green Light post).

After Steep Rise, A123 Systems’ Stock Heading Back Toward IPO Price

2009-11-20T19:47:47+00:00

Nearly two months after its successful initial public offering, A123 Systems seems headed back to its roots.

The company's stock has traded at around $15 today and has dipped into the high $14 range. (I noticed this after getting a stock quote for a report that Tesla may file for an IPO.) A123 went out at $13.50.

Stocks are currently being whacked, so it's natural that the battery maker would take a hit. Still, it's been a wild two months. The company's stock climbed to nearly $20 on the first day of trading, a 45 percent increase. A little while later, it climbed past $28 and stayed in the $20 plus range through most of October.

But November has brought a spate of bad news and a gradual slide downward. First, Fiat announced it had revamped and trimmed back Chrysler's electric car plans. Chrysler had picked A123 to make its batteries. A week later, A123, in its most recent quarterly report, posted a $22.9 million loss but an increase in revenue. On the plus side, the company completed a utility energy storage project in Chile.

Tesla Prepping for IPO, Speculates Reuters

2009-11-20T19:35:57+00:00

Tesla Motors is preparing to move forward with an IPO, according to unidentified sources at Reuters.

There is no S-1 on file right now, according to the SEC's website, but that would be the first step.

Many have waited for Tesla to start moving on an IPO. It is one of the most visible green companies and, with its loan from the government, will likely be able to fulfill its ambitions of bringing out a sedan in a few years.

The A123 Systems IPO likely had an effect as well. A123's stock zoomed up the first day of trading and sparked hopes that more would follow. (A number of people, in fact, sent Musk news articles on the A123 IPO the day it occurred, I'm told.)

Of course, not everything goes as planned. Although A123 nearly hit $20 on the first day of trading, it is now wallowing around $15. The company went out at $13.50.

Johnson Controls: What’s Hot in Green Building

2009-11-20T19:15:54+00:00

Johnson Controls will informally refer to itself as the IBM of green building and in many ways the analogy is apt. Both companies have extensive histories. The Milwaukee-based company just announced another quarterly dividend, the latest in a streak that stretches back to 1887.

And, like IBM, the company is pervasive in its field. Johnson is one of the principal contractors behind the retrofit of the Empire State Building. It also employs 800 LEED-accredited employees. Thus, what the company does will have some impact on the market. (It also received a $299 million grant to develop transportation batteries earlier this year.)

We recently spoke to Don Albinger, vice president of renewable energy solutions. Here's what's on his mind:

• Performance-based contracts continue to gain popularity, particularly with public sector companies like schools or government agencies. In these agreements, a contractor performs a retrofit and then guarantees certain reductions in energy consumption, etc. If they miss, the owner gets a refund. The contracts are similar to energy services contracts, in which the contractor gets paid through a portion of the energy saved, but there are differences.

• Industrial solar steam is taking off. In these systems, heat from the sun is exploited to run industrial boilers. "It is about a 40 percent efficient process. Solar thermal has advantages we need to capitalize on," he said.

• Although biomass has been gathering interest in some parts of the country, it is being challenged by the relatively low price of natural gas.

• One of the next waves in the industry will involve around tying building energy management systems to other enterprise applications. HVAC will be linked to building security applications and both will be integrated into financial and other applications. This will make energy savings and efficiency more dynamic and easier to measure. The company worked on a project like this with the state of Missouri, which has helped cut millions out of operating budgets.

• And of course, customers looking at ways to cut power bills should always think about reducing consumption before putting up solar panels.

"You've got to stop the building from losing energy before you start putting in new capital equipment," he said.

Ontario May Follow California With TV Energy Standards

2009-11-20T17:59:15+00:00

Two days after California passed energy efficiency regulations for TV, government officials in Ontario say they might go the same direction.

"We're always looking at ways we need to improve standards with appliances," Energy Minister Gerry Phillips told the Star. "Over the next few months we'll be looking at whether we need to set some additional new standards."

Whether and how quickly another government might follow California was one of the big questions following the 5–0 vote by the California Energy Commission to adopt regulations that set standards for energy efficiency. Under the new California rules, TVs measuring 58 inches or less will have to become 33 percent more efficient by 2011 and 49 percent more efficent by 2013.

The annoucement likely already sent members of the Consumer Electronics Association to Expedia to book flights to Canada's home of greentech. The California regulations came after a long, hard battle.

Many TVs already meet that standard. Panasonic already makes plasma TVs, for instance, that consume 142 watts. Hitachi and others have also begun to show off technologies – like automatic shut-off and TVs with energy efficient lighting schemes – that could lead to TVs that consume less than 100 watts. In fact, 1,000 TVs already meet the standard, the CEC pointed out.

True, but it's the unintended consequences that scare manufacturers. Integrating a hard drive into a TV so that it can record TV shows invariably will increase power consumption. However, a TV with a built-in DVR might consume less energy than TVs and DVRs sold separately. The regulations, thus, could increase power consumption. Energy efficiency can also add to the cost of TVs.

Gore: White House Shooting for Climate Bill by Spring

2009-11-20T00:27:02+00:00

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Former Vice President Al Gore says the White House will try to get a climate bill passed by late spring 2010 or earlier.

"The window for 2010 probably closes around when spring ends," he said during a speech at GreenBeat taking place in San Mateo. Things are looking a bit up. Senators Joe Lieberman (Gore's former running mate) and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are already working with Democratic senators to write a piece of legislation that will get at least some bipartisan support. It will probably include more subsidies for nuclear power, but otherwise will be similar to the Waxman-Markey bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed earlier this year.

If the White House can get a Spring victory, it can go to a international conference in June with a solid U.S. position on climate legislation. Otherwise, the next big international event for the White House to present what the U.S. has accomplished comes in Mexico City in late 2010.

While green power is important, Gore added that infusing the grid with intelligence will likely have a larger impact.

"The single largest solution is efficiency," he said. "The reason efficiency is the largest source of low carbon or no carbon energy is the fact that we waste so much energy."

Distributed generation and power will also increase the need for grid improvements. The average age of transformers in the U.S. is 42 years old. Lots of new products, jobs etc. Whirlpool has smart appliances coming.

Right now it takes 1 gigawatt worth of power just to provide power to TVs that are plugged in yet turned off, Gore stated.

Things will outnumber people on the internet, he stated. By early next year, there will be one billion transistors for every person in the world.

Other highlights of the speech so far: We face a masssive climate change and he used to listen to Minnie Pearl on the Grand Ol' Opry.

Google PowerMeter: It’s Our Gift to Humanity, Really

2009-11-19T21:32:52+00:00

Ed Lu, the former astronaut who now works as a program manager for advanced projects at Google, says that Google does not see PowerMeter, the software it created for monitoring energy in your home, as a way to make money.

"We are not trying to build a business model around it," he said.

The project comes out of Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, so Lu gets rated on things other than profit, he explained to an audience at Greenbeat taking place in San Mateo. Data collected through PowerMeter is yours to keep. "Customers should control it. They can delete it," he said.

Saying things that people don't have to take seriously is one of the hallmarks of success in corporate America. Apple, Intel, Microsoft, General Motors have all at one point in their histories enjoyed the gift of ludicrous shamelessness. (Disclosure: I used Google for adjectives.)

Lu, though, did make a good point. Google has helped popularize some energy management products. The Energy Detective, a device for managing power from a South Carolina company, has been selling devices for a while. It suddenly sold out after it partnered with Google and Google mentioned the company on its blogs. More companies will support PowerMeter, he added. Ideally, companies will be able to adopt PowerMeter without even having to talk to a human at Google.

But the good-as-business goal does raise some interesting conflicts. Tendril has a tested and highly rated energy management system. Tendril, however, is not part of Google's PowerMeter alliance. Why not promote them anyway? Why not promote Microsoft's Hohm? Good of humanity and all.

Following the Money in Smart Grid

2009-11-19T21:06:13+00:00

Camille Ricketts of Venture Beat moderated a panel on VC investment in smart grid at the Greenbeat event this morning.

Here are a few notable observations and quotes from the investors on the panel.

Peter Wagner of Accel Partners:

He's very interested in the issues in the charging and control of EVs.
He encourages entrepreneurs to find customers who are not the utility – go direct to a consumer.
Wagner is looking for the company that looks like Opower meets Playfish – bringing social networking plus energy monitoring direct to the consumer
"Wouldn't be surprised to see Cisco acquire Silver Spring Networks – although Cisco is probably tired of being extorted in the M&A market." (See Tandberg.)
The negative with government smart grid funding is the risk of "false positives" – chasing pools of dollars that seem to exist but are really a mirage.

Don Wood of DFJ on greentech exit action in China:

Wind turbine blade manufacturer "Tang Energy will go public" and I think you will see an EV company go public in 2010."

Microsoft Turns Sacramento Onto Hohm

2009-11-19T17:07:06+00:00

Microsoft turned on the data feeds to its Hohm home energy monitoring platform at a third utility on Thursday – the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

SMUD has 1.4 million customers, and all will now be able to see their monthly power bills through the Hohm web-based platform, Microsoft planned to announce Thursday morning at the utility's Sacramento, Calif. headquarters.

Microsoft has already enabled similar functionality at two other utilities – Xcel Energy, with 3.4 million customers, and Seattle City Light, with about one million customers (see Green Light post).

The monthly data – which doesn't require a smart meter to be delivered to customers – can be linked with information customers can input themselves about their household energy use. Hohm merges it all to give homeowners tips to help save energy (see Microsoft Launches Home Energy Site, Sees Devices, Demand Response in Future).

It's a model a bit more like energy efficiency tip websites, though Microsoft would like to see more frequent smart meter data incorporated into the system as it becomes available.

That's the route most other home energy management platforms are taking.

That includes Google, which has signed up about 10 utilities, smart meter maker Itron, and home energy gear makers The Energy Detective and AlertMe to provide data to its web-based PowerMeter platform (See Green Light post and Google, British Gas Help AlertMe Launch Home Energy Control).

Google and Microsoft have other differences in how they approach the home energy management market (see Green Light post for a list).

Of course, there are also dozens of startups such as Tendril, Control4, OpenPeak, EnergyHub, Onzo, and many others attacking the home energy management space. Two notable ones, Greenbox and Lixar, have been acquired by richly funded smart grid startups Silver Spring Networks and GridPoint, respectively, and meter data management software maker eMeter has launched its own platform as well (see Green Light post, Silver Spring Swallows Greenbox and stories here, here, here and here).

News Corp. Picks Hara for Carbon Accounting

2009-11-19T16:50:39+00:00

Hara, the carbon and energy accounting software that's landed such clients as Coca-Cola and the cities of Palo Alto and San Jose, has gained another big client – Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Hara will provide its Environmental and Energy Management platform to help the media giant measure and analyze energy and emissions information from hundreds of facilities around the world, the two announced Thursday.

Chalk it up as another big win for the two year old, Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup, which came out of stealth mode in May with news that it had raised $6 million from VC powerhouse Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers (see Energy Management Startup Hara Lands Coke as Client, $6M From Kleiner).

Since then, Hara has added $14 million to its war chest with a Series B financing including Kleiner and new investors JAFCO Ventures and Nth Power (see Hara Grabs $14M, Seeks International Markets).

Hara is one of the best-funded startups competing in the nascent, but primed-for-growth business of carbon and energy accounting software. Others include CarbonFlow, Planet Metrics, Carbonetworks and CSRWare (see Carbon Accounting: It's All About Appearances).

Analysts say these startups will need deep pockets to compete against enterprise software giants such as SAP and CA that are entering the field – some by purchasing startups of their own – as well as others with a long history of helping companies manage energy and environmental data (see Giants vs. Startups: SAP Stakes Carbon Accounting Claim).

Hara and News Corp. did not disclose financial terms of the deal announced Thursday. But News Corp. has set a goal of making all its business units carbon neutral by next year – down from 641,150 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents it emitted in the 52 countries in which it operated in 2006 – so it looks like Hara will have its work cut out for it.

Video: Cleaning the Ocean With Carbon

2009-11-19T13:05:23+00:00

SAN FRANCISCO -- Here's something you don't expect to see.

A-Z Comp, a startup from Russia, wants to use graphene, a type of carbon molecule, to clean up oil spills. When oil spills into the ocean, it sticks together in a muddy pool. You can actually move a tiny slick around with your hand.

When graphene is sprinkled onto the slick, the oil slick breaks up. The oil bonds to the solid and then gets swept out of the water when the graphene gets sucked up. Picking out the graphene is like pulling out sand. Watch it in the video. There was no oil left in the bucket.

Another cool thing: Graphene is incredibly light. The spice jar full of graphene weighed only a few ounces. Far less the salt.

"Scientists in labs can make graphene, but we are the only ones to produce it in production quantities," said Alisher Abdul, the CEO.

KP’s John Doerr on Greentech: ‘The Largest Economic Opportunity of the 21st Century’

2009-11-19T05:39:24+00:00

Introduced by Venture Beat's Matt Marshall as "The best known investor in Web 1.0, involved in the founding of Amazon, Netscape, and Google," John Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins, have raised a billion dollars to be channeled into greentech.

"Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," said Doerr.

Speaking at Venture Beat's inaugural Smart Grid event in San Mateo Calif., he offered his usual thoughts on greentech governent spending, the daughter Mary story ("Your generation created this problem you better fix it.") but he did add some interesting quotes:

"The internet is a $1 trillion economy. Compare that with the energy business, a $6 trillion dollar economy."
"The super grid is going to be the last great network we buid in our lifetimes."
"Google took about $25 million to get to IPO," he said. Doerr compared that to Bloom Energy which has taken $350 million. "There is so much capital required to grow a great green company." Bloom, which "has substantial revenues and orders required ten times as much capital – and we are seven years into Bloom. I wager nine years to a successful public offering."
"Advice to investors: Don't count on additional government incentives."
"In green in particular we have woefully underinvested."
"My lesson about policy is not to argue about your self interest. Make an argument that's bigger and about jobs or competitiveness – and you're going to change a few minds."
"Energy is the the sum of all lobbyists."
"If we had foreseen the crash, we might not have invested in green."
He had three suggestions for carbon: "Put a price on carbon, put a price on carbon, put a price on carbon. It will be a signal to have private investors move their capital to low carbon energy."

Kleiner Perkins' cleantech investments include Bloom Energy (Fuel Cells), MiaSolé (CIGS PV), Solexel (3D Silicon Cell PV), Alta Devices (Stealth PV), Ausra (Solar Thermal), Altarock (Geothermal), Fisker Automotive (EVs) and several others. Their smart grid investments include Silver Spring Networks and Hara Software.

* * *

Here's an interesting thing about VC investment in smart grid: Investors talk about it a lot but the numbers are low. It's a bit surprising to see the small proportion of smart grid deals relative to VC in greentech as a whole:

So are VCs talking and not diving in? Are they looking to see the outcome of Silver Spring Networks' utility roll-out? Are we only in early days?

Or will these initial forays into Advanced Meter Infrastructure and Home Energy Networks give way to a bigger and steadier wave of other smart grid technologies like Vehicle to Grid, EV charging stations, data management and analytics, network optimization tools, and independent energy storage operators?

The next few quarters will tell. Smart people in Greentech Media's smart grid practice see a new smart grid innovation and investment wave about to break.

$1B Polysilicon Plant in Saudi Arabia

2009-11-18T19:43:14+00:00

The First Energy Bank of Bahrain plans to build a polysilicon plant in Saudia Arabia to serve an increasing demand for solar energy generation in the Middle East.

The bank said it's teaming up with Project Management and Development Co. in Saudi Arabia to build the factory, which would cost about $1 billion, reported the Reuters. The factory would have an annual capacity of 7,500 tons; production is set to begin in 2013.

The Islamic bank plans to finance the project with 40 percent equity and 60 percent debt. Part of that debt would come from the Saudi government.

The developers already have signed an off-take agreement with Vinmar International in the United States, a petrochemical seller in Houston.

Countries in the Middle East are eager to invest in solar and other renewable energy manufacturing and generation. They see such investments as necessary to lessen their dependence on oil consumption and production.

Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates, has invested in solar panel manufacturing and installations. Kuwait plans to solicit bids next year for a solar power plant. Saudia Arabia wants to build a 2-megawatt solar farm at its King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

Itron, Comverge Test Plug-In Car Charging Control

2009-11-18T18:04:56+00:00

Add car-charging to the list of capabilities smart meter maker Itron and demand response provider Comverge want to offer utilities.

The two companies said Wednesday that they've succeeded in an experiment with Michigan utility DTE Energy to control plug-in electric and hybrid vehicle charging systems.

Comverge's Apollo software sent signals through Itron's meters via ZigBee Smart Energy Profile to tell cars to stop charging when the utility wanted to reduce power demand on its grid, the companies said. The same system was able to stop charging when power prices contained in messages exceeded a certain threshold, then re-start charging when prices fell.

Think of it as one of the more forward-looking applications for doing demand response through smart meters, something Comverge and Itron have been working on since this summer (see The Elusive Smart Meter-Demand Response Combo). DTE Energy plans to install about 2.6 million Itron electricity meters over the next six years.

It's one of many experiments underway to control electric and plug-in vehicle charging, which could add huge new demands on utilities. General Motors, Toyota and Nissan plan to start selling plug-in hybrid or all-electric cars in 2010, and more are to come (see Electrification Coalition: U.S. Needs One-Quarter EVs, PHEVs by 2020).

Car charging startups such as Ecotality, Better Place and Coulomb Technologies are promising systems to control charging so it doesn't overwhelm the grid (see The Hidden Player in Electric Cars, Coulomb In Your Garage and Better Place and Ontario Launch Project).

Utilities Duke Energy and Xcel Energy are trying out GridPoint's car-charging technology, and General Motors and Ford are working on systems as well (see Green Light post and Electric Vehicles Could Surpass Grid or Support It).

IBM is working with Danish utility Dong Energy on a similar project, and Comverge has joined a host of partners in Delaware to test out another car-charging platform (see IBM Tests Smart Charging in Denmark and A V2G Test: Pool Electric Cars for Grid Needs).

And Google, has discussed linking its PowerMeter home energy management system to car charging software (see Green Light post).

Cash for Caulkers: The President Is Mulling Home Energy Efficiency

2009-11-18T17:13:24+00:00

Cash For Caulkers, now officially called Homestar, is in front of the president, according to the The New York Times.

“It’s one of the top things he’s looking at," said Rahm Emanuel, the President's chief of staff told the paper.

The $23 billion dollar program would essentially provide incentives to homeowners to weatherize and energy retrofit their homes. John Doerr has become the public face for the program, but it emerged from Steve Cowell and Matt Golden, the founder of Recurve (formerly Sustainable Spaces). Matt told us about his work a few weeks ago and the clever caulkers name, but forgot to get around to it. Sorry about that.

"We looked at the state of the construction industry (scary, 17%+ unemployment) and the opportunity for job creation and for hitting our climate goals in retrofitting," Golden wrote us earlier this month.

Housing is a top priority in the White House. Joe Biden has already launched the Recovery through Retrofit program to make home retrofits easier to finance. It's also no coincidence that Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, formerly run by Department of Energy Secretary Steve Chu, is the nation's premier building energy efficiency research center.

With carbon cap and trade looking like a next year issue, don't be surprised to see energy efficiency bills carved out of the main legislation and passed on their own. This is one of the few green issues that enjoys bipartisan support. It saves energy and creates jobs that are difficult to outsource to China. Someone has to go into the attic. If both programs pass, there could be a stampede to Lowe's.

Just by coincidence, Golden has been writing a series of articles on weatherization and energy efficiency on our website. Here are his two most recent posts.

EcoFactor, Building Energy Efficiency, Win at Cleantech Open

2009-11-18T02:12:55+00:00

SAN FRANCISCO -- Functional trumped futuristic at the Cleantech Open this year.

EcoFactor, which has produced an energy management system for homes that doesn't need a smart meter, won the national grand prize. Other finalists included modular solar maker Armageddon Energy (see award-winning video here) and companies that promise to turn sewage and carbon dioxide into plastic and other materials. Waste heat specialist Alphabet Energy was also a finalist.

The alumni award went to Adura Technologies, which specializes in managing lights (and in the future energy) in commercial buildings. The sustainability went to HydroVolts, which has created a tidal turbine that extracts power from irrigation ditches. I kid you not. It's great stuff. Read more here. Adura is already in the market and EcoFactor will be soon.

In EcoFactor's system, a wireless thermostat sends data to a home DSL or cable box. A continual exchange of data between the home gateway and EcoFactor's servers then allows EcoFactor's servers to modulate the temperature up or down according to parameters set by the consumer and data gathered about a consumer's usage and behavior.

The centralized servers also analyze local weather patterns in order to forecast or devise a cooling/heating strategy for the next 24 hours. The weather data, along with the historical data about your home, effectively forms a thermal profile of your home that allows the company to fine-tune power consumption and reduction.

"It's like cruise control for the air conditioner," CEO John Steinberg told us earlier this month. "We are not taking away any form of control. We are doing what you would do if you were paying attention."

Oncor, the Texas utility, has tested the system in a limited number of homes and contracted with EcoFactor to install the system into close to 2,000 homes. That will give Oncor approximately 3 megawatts worth of demand response capacity it can turn to on emergency days.

Overall, the system can cut heating and air conditioning power by 20 percent to 30 percent, Steinberg claims.

The Cleantech Open seeks out promising startups throughout the western U.S. and then gives them publicity and prizes. It's a great start for anyone.

Renewable Energy for $1 a Watt? Yes, Says Alphabet Energy

2009-11-18T01:23:32+00:00

SAN FRANCISCO -- Alphabet Energy, a Lawrence Berkeley National Labs spin-out with a semiconductor that converts heat directly into power, says it can make devices that will produce power at close to $1 a watt.

Traditional waste heat converters cost around $20 a watt and are made out of bismuth telluride. Alphabet won't say what it's semiconductor is made from, but sources say it is silicon nanowires.

The company, one of the finalists for the Cleantech Open, hopes to get a prototype plant running in about 18 months. Potentially, it could move into mass manufacturing 18 months to two years after that. The chips will be bought mostly by industrial manufacturers first, where the material could be wrapped around hot steam pipes. Later, it could move into the auto industry, but the amount of heat and often lower temperatures could make that a challenge.

The U.S. consumes around 100 quads (100 quadrillion BTUs) of energy a year and 55 to 60 quads get dissipated as waste heat, according to Arun Majumdar, the UC Berkeley professor who came up with a lot of the technology behind Alphabet. He now runs ARPA-E, the advanced projects group inside the Department of Energy.

GMZ Energy, Promethean Power and Cypress Semiconductor are all also experimenting with thermoelectric devices and various semi materials like gallium. GMZ and Cypress want to turn heat into power while Promethean converts electricity from PV panels directly into heat.

MC10 and Photonic Devices recently received grants from ARPA-E to develop, respectively, waste heat semiconductors from silicon nanotubes and what silicon nanowires.

Companies such as Recycled Energy Development (RED) and Ormat have successfully retrofitted factories to capture waste heat, but they largely rely on mechanical engineering. Heat is captured and then channeled into productive uses. One of RED's showcase projects coming next year is a system at West Virginia Alloys, a silicon manufacturer, that will generate 45 megawatts of electrical power from the waste heat generated by factory operations. The company uses 120 megawatts right now: The waste heat system will effectively allow Alloys to recover about one-third of the power it now buys but wastes.

Replacing mechanical systems with semiconductors, potentially, will be the next wave for the industry.

Waste heat – we love it around here.

Chinese Wind Power Maker to Set Up Factory in U.S.

2009-11-17T17:54:03+00:00

A-Power Wind Generation Systems and the U.S. Renewable Energy Group have said that they will build a wind turbine factory in the U.S. that will produce 1,100 megawatts worth of wind turbines a year and employ approximately 1,000 American workers.

One-thousand jobs is great, but the real interesting part is who the companies are. China's A-Power and U.S. Renewable are part of a joint venture that wants to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in Texas that is something of a Chinese creation. Shenyang Power Group, the U.S. Renewable Energy Group and Cielo Wind Power. Shenyang will own 49 percent of the project. It will employ turbines from A-Power Generation. Jinxiang Lu is CEO of both SPG and A-Power. Commercial banks in China will provide financing.

When it was first announced, the joint venture said that the Texas wind farm would create about 2,800 jobs, but only about 240 in the U.S. U.S. politicians began to thunder. Hence the change.

"A-Power sees great opportunities in renewable energy in America and this state-of-the-art facility will be our first major step towards bringing clean, renewable energy to the world's largest wind power country," said John Lin, A-Power's Director and COO in a prepared statement.

And the key takeaway for you job seekers is this: Brush up on your knowledge of international relations. Just as Japanese manufacturers became large employers in the '80s in the U.S. Chinese manufacturers seem posed to do the same in the next decade. Suntech Power Holdings plans to open a module assembly facility in Arizona. Duke Energy Services has linked up with China's ENN, which makes thin-film solar panels and develops solar farms, to bid on contracts for utility-scale solar farms and large commercial solar projects in the U.S. Duke will bring its expertise in navigating through public hearings and the legal hurdles of getting large-scale projects off the ground along with technology for building them to the 50/50 partnership, while ENN will provide expertise for building solar farms and possibly solar panels.

And let's not forget Coda Automotive, which wants to bring an electric car effectively designed and built in China to the U.S. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is an investor.

Itron Enlists Sequentric as Newest Partner

2009-11-17T15:00:52+00:00

Itron has picked a new partner to link its older, one-way communicating electricity meters to utilities – North Carolina-based home energy networking startup Sequentric Energy Systems.

The idea is to capture data that's sent out by those "drive-by" meters – so called because their encoder receiver transmitter (ERT) radios send out signals meant to be captured by utility workers driving by with digital readers – and carry it back to the utility via another communications channel.

At the same time, Sequentric will display the energy usage information, which comes about once every 15 seconds or so, to the homeowner via an interface, which could be a stand-alone panel or a Web or mobile device display, CEO Daniel Flohr said.

There are about 67 million Itron ERT meters in the field today, making them an attractive target for utilities that can't justify replacing them, but still want to make them more capable of two-way communication.

Sequentric joins a long list of partners involved with Itron on that effort, including Tendril Networks, OpenPeak, EnergyHub and Ambient (see Green Light post).

But Flohr thinks that his company's starting price of $59 for a home energy management hub that links to Itron's ERT meters might well beat the prices from the competition. Adding a smart thermostat and a few other sensors attached to appliances or home circuits could be done for less than $150, he said.

Keeping prices low will likely be critical to capturing the home energy management market. Studies indicate that most homeowners don't want to spend much more than $50 to $100 on such a system, and utilities will be pressed to justify to regulators the costs of delivering systems across their entire service territories (see Utilities Mull Price Points, Policies for Home Energy Management).

At the same time, Google and Microsoft have come out with home energy platforms that are free for consumers to use, although they would need smart meters or in-home energy measuring devices to get more detailed real-time energy usage information (see Green light posts here and here).

Unlike some companies making home energy management systems, Sequentric doesn't see itself selling directly to customers, Flohr said.

"We're not suggesting this is something the homeowner goes out and buys," he said. "Our customer is, and likely always will be, the utility company. That's to us how the smart grid gets deployed."

That is, he sees these gateways as a way for utilities to control demand response – turning down air conditioners, clothes dryers, pool pumps and other power-hungry appliances.

To link its devices and gateway, Sequentric uses a proprietary wireless network in the 433-megahertz spectrum. That could make it a hard sell to utilities that are expected to deploy smart grid systems that use standards now being developed by the federal government (see Smart Grid Standards Roadmap Unveiled).

But Flohr said that Sequentric's gateway could come with a bridge device to allow it to communicate via ZigBee, the protocol that's emerging as a leader in North American smart meter deployments, or other standards-based wireless technologies such as WiFi (see RF Mesh, ZigBee Top North American Utilities' Smart Meter Wish Lists).

Sequentric is piloting its system with a number of utilities, Flohr said. Sources have told Greentech Media that one of those partners is Duke Energy, though neither Duke nor Flohr have confirmed that fact (see Sequentric Working on Duke Pilot Project).

Greentech Ponzi Scheme

2009-11-16T23:13:04+00:00

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two companies and their executives for running a $30 million ponzi scheme to defraud mostly elderly investors, who thought they were putting money into eco-friendly projects.

The SEC filed the complaint against Wayde and Donna McKelvy of Denver-based Speed the Wealth and Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr of Mantria Corp. in Pennsylvania.

The four defendants reportedly used seminars and webinars to convince more than 300 investors, particularly those who have retired or are near retirement, to buy bogus shares of Mantra. The investors were led to believe that their money went to projects such as a "carbon negative" residential community in Tennessee and the development of a charcoal substitute from organic waste (biochar), the SEC said.

Mantria had claimed to be a major global producer of biochar with many factories. But the company never sold any biochar and had one facility testing biochar for eventual commercial sales, the SEC said. And there was no plan to build an eco-friendly community in Tennessee – Mantria did re-sell vacant lots that were supposed to be used for such a project.

Some of these investors took money out of their retirement plans or home equity to invest with Mantria. The four defendants allegedly told investors that they could enjoy 17 percent to "hundreds of percent" of returns on their investments annually.

The two companies used the money from the investors to pay other investors for their returns. The McKelvys also reportedly received a 12.5 percent commission for their work, the SEC said.