El Paso Solar Energy Association - EPSEA

Menlo Park, California-Big Brother is here. And he's selling parking spots.

Sensors and the applications that can run on them were the main focus of start-ups at SmartCamp, a global business plan contest sponsored by IBM. Ten years ago, companies like Dust Networks and Intel were showing off proto applications for the "extroverted computing" market, a term I made up in 2003 that failed to catch on. SynapSense and others brought sensors to the data center a few years ago. Now, other applications are coming to market.

StreetLine, for instance, showed off a system that effectively allows consumers to find and reserve parking spots while they drive. The company embeds mesh sensors (which include technology from Dust) into parking spots that communicate with drivers. Drivers can also put more money into the meter remotely via a cell phone. Streetline, along with medical IT company CloudCare, shared the grand prize. The two now go to the international finals in SmartCamp later this year.

Ideally, information on available spots will free up streets.

"Thirty to 35 percent of the traffic in a city is caused by people looking for parking," said CEO Zia Yusuf.

The city benefits too. Only around 6 percent of expired meter violations are ever ticketed or collected. With StreetLine, enforcement officers know exactly at any given moment which cars have run out of time. It also can tell cash collectors which meters have the most coins in them. Trial cities have seen an increase in enforcement levels. San Francisco has installed 3,500 meters and wants to impose dynamic pricing, i.e. letting consumers outbid each other for prime spots. Rigging a parking spot up, including the amortized price of the software and repeaters, comes to around $250. European start-up World Sensing has a similar application but is not as far along.

"The payback can be in months," he said, describing parking spots as "a 20 foot by five foot increasingly valuable piece of real estate."

In a slightly different use of sensors, iFind showed off a tagging system called Wandering Shepherd for cattle and other livestock that monitors their temperature via satellite. If a cow or group of cows suddenly experiences a temperature spike, that can be an early sign of an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease or Mad Cow. Those cows can then be quarantined. Airborne diseases among cattle can travel 50 miles a day.

"Within ten days it can be across 25 states," said CEO Neil Helfrich.

Two Canadian ranches will start field trials in the first quarter of next year. The USDA is looking at sensors to track six kinds of livestock.

It can also track movement. So if a cow starts traveling at 60 miles an hour, it could be another case of rustling.

Next, iFind wants to develop an application that can trace meet from the hoof to the package. (Brazil is working on a similar technology.)

Then there was AquaCue, which developed a sensor and software package that reads water meters and delivers the information to a distant computer or cell phones. Now, utilities send out a reader every other month to check your meter.

The system costs $400 and many consumers pay only $1 a day for water. So how do you make it worthwhile? Leaks. A leak can cost $3,500.

"32 percent of all home insurance claims are leaks," said Shahram Javey, CEO. Hence, your insurer may pay for it. When Javey was testing his prototype in his own home, he discovered a leak.

AquaCue has also created a behavioral application that gives consumers a smiley face/frown sort of grade to improve their water consumption. In early trials, water consumption was reduced 11 to 26 percent.

Other companies: CitySourced has a cell phone app that let people report potholes and other issues to city agencies.

           

 

Vancouver wants to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. At the Shanghai World Expo, mayor Gregor Robertson announced a partnership with Cisco and Pulse Energy, a Vancouver-based energy management system company.

"Going green isn't just good for the environment; it is good for business," Robertson said in a teleconference from Shanghai.

Pulse Energy CEO David Helliwell and Cisco Canada president Nitin Kawale were on the call with the mayor.

Cisco has been pushing city design and management as a way to increase efficiency. Like IBM, the company wants to treat energy holistically. Through building energy management, home energy management, carbon-footprint reduction, and data center efficiency, the lofty goal of building the greenest city doesn't seem so far off.

Cisco has launched pilot programs in Amsterdam, Seoul, and San Francisco, and has set up campuses in places like South Korea and India, and now Vancouver is joining the club.

 

Existing and future products will come together in a big network for the grid. Enter the Internet of Things: Cisco owns Linksys routers, and they sell switches and hubs.

The Cisco Home Energy Management system is basically a dashboard for your home. Just like the dashboard in your car that tells you when you are going to run out of fuel, the home dashboard will tell customers what their energy consumption is in real-time.

Knowledge can help change behavior, or at least it can in theory. The company says customers could reduce their overall energy use anywhere from 4 percent to 15 percent if they got real-time feedback.

The mayor hopes to make buildings more efficient to cut down the city's greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, the Cisco Network Building Mediator will check up on the energy consumption on a few city buildings like City Hall.

Considering that nearly half of all city energy use is consumed in buildings, being able to regularly check up on the buildings will help them become more efficient.

People can get tips on reducing their carbon footprints and look at climate change information using Cisco's internet-based tool, Urban EcoMap. Everything you want to know about neighborhood energy use and carbon emissions from transportation can be seen on this tool.

The mayor hopes partnerships like the one announced today will help make Vancouver a living lab culture that can spark innovation in the cleantech space. Vancouver is one of the many cities Cisco is working with.

With 700 million people moving to cities in the next decade and 100 new cities with a million people each expected to crop up by 2025, the big energy drain that powers megacities will only continue to increase. With 20 megacities consuming 75 percent of the total energy used on the planet, perhaps Vancouver's plan for becoming the greenest city might inspire others to follow suit.

But with energy so cheap in Canada due to BC Hydro's Electric Generation System, will Canadians even care if their energy is greener?

The mayor thinks so. Robertson is hopeful that BC Hydro will partner with them to ease the load on the city's energy supply. However, the possible partnership is a work in progress -- as are other opportunities to build out the energy infrastructure and to encourage retrofitting in buildings.

"This collaboration will help drive a transformational showcase of world-class green initiatives and technologies in the city of Vancouver. These initial pilot projects and subsequent field trials also provide the opportunity to further stimulate green economic development opportunities in the Vancouver and B.C. Lower Mainland, creating a new category of green-collar jobs," Kawale said in the call. The new software market will create jobs, he emphasized.

Up from the previously announced 11.3%, a new target of 25% of all electricity used in Nova Scotia to be derived from renewable sources has now officially been set in place. This goal will increase to 40% by 2020. Seeing how Nova Scotia currently generates most of its power from coal, this is a big commitment.

In order to achieve these ambitious targets, the province is implementing what they call a COMFIT (Community-Based Feed-In Tariff).

The program aims to achieve at least 100MW of its mandate through smaller-scale, community-based Renewable Energy projects, while relying more heavily on better-suited wind, tidal, hydro and biomass projects that are larger in scale to achieve the balance of their objectives.

Much like their Scottish predecessors, Nova Scotia (Latin for New Scotland) plans to prove that energy derived from tidal sources can be just as effective as any other means of generating electricity. The province is home to the only tidal power generating facility in North America, one of just three in the world.

Nova Scotia Power plans to contribute approximately 300 MW of tidal power to the province before 2020. Recent studies show that there may be the potential to harness as much as 2,000 MW of tidal power in the region.

Unlike what many other governments in North America have been known to do, the government of Nova Scotia realizes that they can't just put in place new mandates with the expectation that the program will work on its own. As part of their responsibility and overall dedication to ensuring that the program is a success, the Nova Scotia government will provide guidance in areas such as project development, permitting, approvals, and will even help private energy developers access project financing. The government will also assist by providing smart meters throughout the province.

Legislation is expected to be implemented soon, at which time the corresponding feed-in tariff rules and regulations are also expected to be publicly announced.

Leading renewable energy companies across the country, including Amp Solar, Atlantic Wind & Solar and Tenedos Energy, are now all waiting for tariff rates to be formally confirmed before deciding if they will be moving into the province to capitalize on the program.

A full progress review on the COMFIT program is scheduled to take place in 2012.

Surprisingly, the Canadian federal government feels that green initiatives should not be the responsibility of the nation as a whole, but rather, should be tackled at the provincial level. As such, it is nice to see yet another Canadian province stepping up to the plate while accepting their share of the responsibility in converting the country to clean, green renewable energy sources.

It shouldn't be called the French Nuclear Miracle, says Mark Cooper. It's more like a recurring nightmare.

Unlike computers, solar panels, wind turbines and most other high tech projects, nuclear power plants and projects don't go down in price over time. Instead, the costs escalate, and that's a recipe for a disaster, according to a report released today by Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. (Here is a link to the full report.)

Rising costs means more expensive energy, he said. It also undermines the purpose of subsidies like government-backed loan guarantees, because the subsidies can't be phased out due to the continuing price increases. Worse, the vast scope of nuclear projects invariably absorbs the mental energy of utilities and crowd outs investment in other renewables and energy efficiency.

"The French Nuclear Miracle is a misconception. There is no reason to think that things will change if the U.S. follows France," he said. "It would replicate what I call Nuclear Socialism. Nuclear power would remain a ward of the state."

While safety has long been a flashpoint, cost and construction issues actually represent much larger problems for the nuclear industry. Banks remain wary of funding these projects. Tight budgets and improving alternative technologies may well soon force governments to decide between funding renewables or nuclear.

Strong disagreements exist. Nuclear proponents claim solar and wind can't provide baseload power and that new, streamlined approval processes for reactor designs and sites will cut costs. Renewable advocates say that storage, solar thermal and an increase of solar and wind in geographically dispersed areas can provide baseline-quality power.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel advocates say subsidies are bad -- unless we're talking about discount royalties for extraction on federal lands, liability caps and the other subsides that go their way.

In the 1970s, the "overnight" cost of nuclear power, or the cost of a power plant minus interest on the loans, ran around $1,000 per kilowatt in the U.S. and France when measured in 2008 dollars, according to Cooper. In the '80s, the projected price rose to $3,000 to $4,000 in the U.S., and to $2,000 to $3,000 in France. In the '90s, the projected price in the U.S. rose to $5,000 to $6,000.

Now, the overnight cost of a nuclear plant in the U.S. might be in the $7,000-to-$8,000 per kilowatt range with the all-in cost of a 2-gigawatt nuclear plant running around $20 billion to $25 billion -- in other words, $10 or more per watt.

Solar systems can be erected profitably for $2 to $4 a watt, depending on the size of the project. Modular reactors, Cooper added, won't change the picture. The fixed costs on small projects will be high and increasing the scope of the project will lead to the bloat problem experienced in other nuclear projects.

The culprits are the bidding process and construction delays, added Cooper and Stephen Thomas, professor of energy studies, University of Greenwich, London. In the U.K., Canada, South Africa and elsewhere, governments in recent years have sought bids on nuclear plants under the assumption that nuclear plants would cost $2,500 a kilowatt.

"The bids come in at two to three times that," said Thomas, and the numbers get worse over time. Changes and increasing complexity in the projects invariably means delays. Most of the nuclear projects underway today have been delayed as a result of construction and safety issues. France, he noted, owns the vast majority of shares in EDF and Areva, the nuclear energy giants in France.

The size of these projects then becomes all-consuming, retarding the growth of renewables, for both utilities and governments. The U.S. issued $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for one project earlier this year.

"The utilities become flat-out hostile to anything else that reduces the demand for power from the plant," Cooper said.

So without nuclear, where can the U.S. get baseline power? "The best baseload is efficiency," he said. "We have other alternatives that are less costly."

The majority of the cities in the Northeast have suffered their hottest summers on record. Most of these metropolitan hubs haven't seen temperatures this high since 1921 or 1991, according to Northeast Regional Climate Center.

Well, I guess that explains why I've been sweating so much lately. There comes a point when I'm sitting in my apartment and the heat becomes unbearable, so I crank on the air conditioner. That's exactly the moment when the expensive utility bill becomes an afterthought.

Jeremy Eaton, vice president of Energy Solutions at Honeywell Building Solutions, reassured me that what I'm doing is completely normal. In general, people are putting their comfort before anything else -- which means if they feel hot, they are going to turn on the air conditioning.

Eaton said a recent Honeywell survey showed that two-thirds of American consumers chose comfort over cost savings and don't bother thinking about how they might be conserving energy. After phoning more than a thousand adults ages 18 and older during one week in August 2010, Honeywell had the hard data to back up this rather obvious conclusion.

In fact, the bills reflected the summer heat pattern, which is why 60 percent of all consumers reported an increase in their utility bills. And half that number -- 30 percent of the public -- claimed that it was worth paying more just to be comfortable.

There was some gender-based discrepancy in the responses, however. Females were twice as likely to claim higher bills and more likely to "cringe" at the thought of receiving a higher energy bill next month.

But instead of fretting about costly energy bills this summer, there is a way to sidestep it. Honeywell offers some tips on how to save:

• Invest in a programmable thermostat. Running your air conditioning at a low temperature 24/7 is cheaper than turning the AC on and off.
• Think of your energy bill as a debit card, not a credit card. Don't binge on cooling off. Fifty percent of your bill goes to cooling and heating. With smart meters, getting real-time data will be easier.
• Use high-powered appliances after 10 p.m. Electricity is cheaper at night. It kind of works like cell phone nighttime minutes, but in this case it is energy currency. (See Why Energy Bills Should Look Like Your Cell Phone Plan.)
• Check out energy-saving programs from your utility. Look into what your utility is offering in the way of demand response programs and appliance rebates.
• Get the latest information. Don't live in the dark ages; find out what new technology is coming out that can help you save energy (and money).

What's more, Eaton broke the news to me that the multi-tenant high-rise I live in probably only has one meter, and therefore, one massive monthly electricity bill. The landlord splits up the charge, so while I might be doing the environment a favor by conserving on my use of the AC, it might not matter in terms of billing, because I share the costs with hundreds of other people in my building.

"Right now, energy prices aren't high enough to drive customer behavior, but I think it will change going forward," Eaton said. Clearly, in this heat wave, comfort remains the primary prerogative.

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader (D-NV), and a group of impressive speakers populated the morning panel at the Clean Energy Summit at UNLV earlier this week, entitled National Clean Energy Summit 3.0: Investing in American Jobs.

As moderator John Podesta said, this was about "trying to unleash the capital that's sitting on the sidelines," adding that the "potential in the sustainable energy market could revive the stalled economy and end the recession."

The morning session was called "Connecting Capital With Ideas" and featured the following greentech leaders:

• John Podesta, Center for American Progress Action Fund, moderator
• Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
• John Berdes, Enterprise Cascadia
• Terry Copeland, Altairnano
• Peter Darbee, PG&E
• John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins
• Lynn Jurich, SunRun
• Puon Penn, Wells Fargo
• Lyndon Rive, Solar City
• Nat Simons, Elan Management LLC
• Kevin Smith, SolarReserve
• Anne Stausboll, CalPERS

The first panelist, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, communicated his main points to me in an email.  He said, "My main role was to paint a big picture and to put the challenge and opportunity in perspective."

The scale of the market:

• The energy market is $6 trillion, worldwide, with 4 billion users of electricity. It is the mother of all markets.  Compare that to the internet economy, estimated at $1 trillion worldwide with 1.5 billion users.
• Energy flows through the U.S. amount to $1 trillion per year; renewable energy is at 6 percent.  That's on top of a similar sum we spend each year on that which uses the energy -- our homes, shops, factories, and cars.  That means about $2 trillion per year is at stake right here in the U.S.  Is that money we want to send to hostile powers to import oil?  Are those goods we want to purchase from competitors?  Or, do we want to produce that energy, make those goods, and most importantly, create those jobs here in America?

The U.S. vs. the world

• 30 percent of U.S. energy comes from overseas.  We ship nearly $1 billion per day to other countries for oil.
• If you look at the top thirty clean energy companies worldwide, the top ten in wind, solar, and advanced batteries, only four have headquarters in the U.S.  Compared to IT, it's as if Microsoft, Apple, Google and Intel were headquartered in Asia or Europe, and only Amazon was in the U.S.
• Three years ago China held merely two percent of the solar panel market.  By the fourth quarter of 2009 that share had grown to nearly 50 percent.  During the same period, U.S. market share declined from 43 percent to 16 percent. Do we want to be a world-wide winner in the the race to lead the next great global industry, clean energy?

We need a national energy strategy for this country

• We have no national energy strategy.  Tom Friedman has charitably described U.S. energy policy as "the sum of all lobbyists."
• But U.S. companies can win.  How?  By innovation.  But innovation without execution is a hallucination.
• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.  If you can't do that, at KPCB we say the next best way is to fund it.  Over the last 5 years we've funded >$500 million in clean energy companies, and reserve a similar amount.  Over the next 3 to 4 years we'll fund another 30 to 40 ventures.  So we're doing our part.

Doerr calls for five key policies

1. Put a price on carbon, to unleash capital investments sitting on the sidelines.  More money flows through private capital markets in a day than through all the governments in the world in a year.  Governments cannot fund the massive transition we need to a low-carbon energy future.
2. Get serious about funding new energy investments, as we recommend in the American Energy Innovation Council report (the Gates Commission).
   * create an independent national energy strategy board
   * increase R&D from $5B to $16B.  Americans spend more on potato chips than we do on clean energy R&D.  Federal spending on health care is 10 times greater.
   * create centers of excellence
   * fund ARPA-e at $1 billion per year. In ARPA-e's first year of operation, it was able to fund only 37 of the 3,700 proposals it received.
   * establish and fund large-scale pilot projects
3. Energy efficiency is a great way to reduce carbon emissions while putting hard-hit American construction and manufacturing industries back to work.  A triple win: jobs for American workers, using American products, saving homeowners money on energy bills, contribution to energy independence and carbon reduction
4. Have consistent tax policies to encourage investments
5. Get government to provide a level playing field for market competition, and help, not hinder, this growth.  Doerr criticized the OMB for needless delays that have discouraged outstanding ventures from receiving, and even applying for federal guarantees through DOE.

Utilities

• Peter Darby, CEO of PG&E, described the importance of decoupling, which Doerr emphasized is a really important policy.  Utilities have 100 percent market share, low cost of capital, and vast cash flows.  We must enlist them as allies in the drive to a low-carbon future, in conservation.  It won't happen as long as we pay them more for selling more electrons.

Jobs and investment

• Jobs in Nevada: Amonix (CPV), has a 214,000-square-foot facility in North Las Vegas, and plans to employ 278 people.
• Jobs and investment in California: Doerr reported estimates that there are 500,000 employees in clean, green jobs in California.  Since 1995, 12,000 new California cleantech companies, $9 billion of venture capital invested in cleantech 2005-2009, $2.1 billion in 2009 alone.

And lastly:

• Doerr encourages people to learn more about CEDA, HOME STAR, and the American Energy Innovation Council.

I also spoke with Lynn Jurich of SunRun about the event, her firm and U.S energy policy.  Jurich spoke about the need for an energy policy, any consistent long-term energy policy that would allow investors like CalPERs to bring more capital to renewables.  But we'll cover that and get you some more news about SunRun in an upcoming article.

This past April, the Carbon War Room asked attendees at its conference to come up with recommendations and strategies for solving six major problems in green technology.

All six groups said that better communication with the public, investors and policymakers about the issues and benefits of green technology had become absolutely essential. PG&E's problems with its smart grid efforts revolve around poor communication with the public.

Meanwhile, newspapers, television stations, web sites and magazines have been shedding reporters like dead skin follicles at a day spa.

In honor of this week's Labor Day, here's the obvious solution: corporations and consulting firms need to start hiring the journalists being sent to early retirement, preferably at mid- to high-six-figure salaries.

Naturally, I expect resistance to this plan. The corporate overlords of the world often view media types and even the communications departments in their own organizations as just one step above a pack of Northern White-Cheeked Gibbons on the evolutionary scale. For their part, reporters often exude a heavy dose of self-righteousness ("How can you people continually fail to realize that I wrote that first?"), which can impede group dynamics.

True, but we also didn't cause the derivative securities crisis or rubber-stamp excessive CEO pay, so maybe corporations need a new infusion of skills.

So what will a reporter do for you?

1. Contacts. Why do people go into media? To meet people. The day primarily consists of making phone calls or going to conferences and talking about other people behind their backs. It's sort of like high school with name tags. With enough practice and time, you wind up with an impressive list of email addresses and phone numbers. Marketing, sales and recruiting will thank you.

2. Horizon. Analysts tend to live vertically. They might understand a single subject -- databases, silicon production, etc. -- comprehensively, but have little knowledge of adjacent subjects like PCs or wafers. Reporters live in a horizontal world. Their knowledge may lack depth, but they are often the first to notice or pick up on trends and connections, such as like how the solar and optical industries overlap, or how biotech will change batteries and EVs, or how Mississippi will likely start offering incentives and perks to your company to relocate, between different fields.

3. History. Cisco will likely do well in its strategy to move into smart grid and energy efficiency by buying startups, while IBM and Intel will, more than likely, flail. Why? The basic pattern was established in the '90s during the first internet boom. Cisco honed a process for absorbing startups. Intel spent $11 billion on 37 companies between 1999 and 2003 and offloaded most of them soon after. Behavior doesn't change much. Reporters are walking, talking databases of this kind of information.

4. Executive Evaluation. U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is an engaging, charismatic individual that also happens to be a control freak who alienates subordinates. How do I know that? I interviewed her several times and had even lengthier conversations with people that worked for her before she got fired at Hewlett-Packard. Venture capitalists often talk about how they invest in people, not technologies. A great untapped reservoir of knowledge about leadership in action resides in the reporting ranks.

Admittedly, the radar fails. I remember how the press scoffed at a special guest Andy Grove introduced during a speech in February 2000 at the Intel Developer Forum. The guest, whom most didn't know, said he wanted to store the entire Internet on DRAM -- an expensive but rapid storage technology -- for better customer experience.

That token crazy guy was Larry Page. (Check out the transcript. Page had to explain what Google was.)

5. Clear, Concise Communication. Be honest: how many times have you actually gotten past the executive summary in a white paper? The world thrives on summaries. PowerPoint slide decks are so popular as a means of communication because the pictures outnumber the words: they are really pop-up books for grown-ups.

By hiring someone trained in a newsroom, your longest memo will shrink to two pages.

6. Deadlines. The lithium-ion battery was invented in the U.S. at Exxon in the '70s. The modern hybrid came out of a DOE program. Both died a lingering death in the U.S. through mission creep. Holding fast to a due date has its virtues.

7. An Ability to Hold on to Small Plates Filled With Egg Rolls and a Drink at the Same Time. It's a more useful skill than you might think.

8. Shorter Meetings. Letting everyone have their own opinion is perhaps the biggest hindrance to U.S. competitiveness. Michael Dell tackled the problem of interminable meetings at his company by eliminating chairs in some conference rooms. With reporters as employees, meetings will rarely last longer than half an hour. Sometimes, it requires a person with eroded social skills to break the log jam on an eddying conference call.

9. Casual Day Becomes Dress-Up Day.

10. Visionary Leadership. John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Teddy Roosevelt worked as journalists before becoming titans on the world stage. Note how all three tended to speak in bullet points and sound bites.

We've had two engineers become President: Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.

Look, I'm just going by the record.

What’s more beneficial to our country and environment — a rapid deployment of renewable technologies through specially crafted policies and incentives, or letting markets determine which technologies win?

See the German solar miracle, which has made the cloudy country the largest solar consumer in the world and a major manufacturer of panels. California has become a hotbed of solar activity because of federal and state tax credits that cover more than 30 percent of the costs of the equipment. Ideally, the incentives and supportive policies can be phased out over time.

Free market advocates argue that incentives distort the market. See the Spanish solar debacle, where fluctuating incentives lead to economic chaos for solar companies that rushed to Spain. In Texas, some wind farm owners actually pay customers to take electricity because of a wrinkle in the incentive program.

Historical examples support both sides. Railroads crisscrossed the country in the nineteenth century in part because of sweetheart land grants from states and the federal government. The U.S. freeway system, created to enhance national security, lead to a population boom and new cities in the Southwest. The internet? It grew out of a military research program.

But how about those inefficient national airlines? Or hydrogen cars? Government is often not good at picking winners, say critics.

What do you think we should do?

Read more on this topic in a joint effort by General Electric Ecomagination and Greentech Media, and join the conversation here.

Given all of the drama in the auto business in recent years, it's been easy to overlook Honda (NYSE: HMC). After all, it hasn't had the epic global growth (or epic recall drama) of Toyota (NYSE: TM), nor a dramatic near-death-and-rebirth story like Ford (NYSE: F).

Instead, Japan's No. 2 automaker has been cruising along, continuing to pay a modest dividend to shareholders despite the global economic crunch, and continuing to keep its loyal customers happy with great products.

Or has it?

The part about the dividend is true enough -- though with a 0.9% dividend yield, I'd hardly call Honda a dividend champ -- but the rest?

CAPS players have given Honda's stock a five-star rating, but I think there's a case to be made that Honda's coasting on its past achievements. Given the competition, that's a bad plan.

It's not your father's Honda

Many of us formed our impressions of Honda's cars years ago. I'm no exception -- my dad bought his first Honda, an Accord, in late 1979. It was the first of three Hondas he'd own during the 1980s. None of them were speed demons, but the handling and build quality were miles beyond the Detroit products we were used to. And we weren't the only ones to notice: Honda's sales soared through the decade.

But now? For the most part, Hondas still do well in those all-important Consumer Reports reliability surveys. But they've got a lot more company in the top tiers of the magazine's comparison tests -- from Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Ford, and (believe it or not) even General Motors.

Hondas are still reliable, in other words, but that's not as much of an edge as it used to be -- everybody has upped their quality game. Sure, Honda still sells plenty of cars. But the innovative edge on which the company built its reputation seems to have disappeared. Review after review says much the same thing: Honda's cars are good, but not great. With a couple of shining exceptions, Honda seems to have gone from building great products that drive growth to building good-enough products that (mostly) keep loyal customers coming back.

The last automaker to try that strategy was General Motors, and we all know how well that worked out. Standing still -- even for Honda -- isn't good enough in today's ultra-competitive global marketplace.

Hey Honda, where's your electric car?

Electric vehicles are about to be huge -- but Honda seems to be missing in action. After years of talk, the EV space is about to heat up for real, with Ford and Nissan and General Motors joining hybrid kings Toyota on one side, and upstarts like Silicon Valley's Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA) and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) backed Chinese automaker BYD (OTC: BYDDY.PK) on the other. Honda, who should have absolutely ruled this space by now, instead looks like a Johnny-come-lately with what seem like hastily drawn-up plans to launch EVs... at some point.

Meanwhile, the company's hybrids -- another corner of the market that Old Honda would have owned -- look like also-rans in the shadow of Toyota and, increasingly, Ford. The company's new CR-Z hybrid is a tiny two-seater, just like its pioneering 49 mpg. Insight was back in 1999 -- but this one can't even match the Prius's fuel economy numbers, much less break 60 mpg on the highway like its predecessor.

Speaking of Honda's hybrids, while the company may not have Toyota-sized quality troubles, it's had surprisingly un-Honda ones. Consider the Civic Hybrid's batteries, which are developing a reputation for dying years ahead of schedule. Honda recently introduced a software "fix" for the problem, but owners contend that the fix lowers the car's mileage from around 45 mpg to a much more pedestrian figure in the low 30s.

Not good, especially when Toyota's hybrids -- and Ford's -- just seem to keep cruising along.

A spark of hope?

Every company has recalls and quality issues from time to time, of course. But there's more serious evidence that Honda's product development has gotten off track. The current Civic, in many ways the company's bread-and-butter model, is almost five years old. That's not exactly ancient -- except that Honda has for years replaced the Civic on a rigid four-year schedule, and apparently the most recent edition was sent back to the drawing board shortly before its planned launch.

Why? Honda isn't saying, of course. But ironically, it might be a good sign: As we all know, the first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge that it exists. But I think I need to see more evidence of a product turnaround before we can call Honda's stock a buy.

***

This article was originally published by The Motley Fool.

Concentrators for photovoltaic modules may still be a zero-billion-dollar market, but money from investors continues to flow in.

Solaria, which combines a silicon solar cell and a concentrator in a single package, says it raised $20 million more today, bringing its total to $65 million.

Solaria's technology is based on dicing or "singulating" a standard crystalline silicon wafer and mounting these strips on a substrate with a lensing system that essentially halves the requirement for silicon. The lensing and concentration is integrated into the rolled cover glass, representing a significant change from an earlier acrylic sub-assembly design.

The company is run by Dan Shugar, who helped found Powerlight (bought by SunPower) and has worked in solar since 1988.

Elsewhere:

--Lawrence Berkeley National Labs has come out with a study that examines the impact of more solar on the grid. It concluded that geographic diversity helps stabilize the impact of variable sources. In other words, solar becomes more dependable as it becomes more pervasive. Read more here.

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--The California Energy Commission gave the green light to the 250-megawatt solar thermal project proposed by Spain's Abengoa. The CEC in August recommended that the go-ahead be given to the construction phase of the project. Construction could begin before the end of the year.

The plant, located about 100 miles north of Los Angeles in San Bernadino County, will rely on parabolic mirrors and liquid-filled tubes to concentrate heat and generate power. It's the old-fashioned architecture for solar thermal plants, but it's also the predominant one. Parabolic troughs account for 94 percent of systems in the ground and 95 percent of those under construction.

The project is one of nine solar thermal projects slated to go before the CEC. The projects -- which will provide 4.3 gigawatts of power if built -- need to obtain approval before the end of the year to qualify for stimulus dollars.

The eight other projects are: the 250 MW Beacon Solar Energy Project; the 1,000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project; the 850 MW Calico Solar Project; the 250 MW Genesis Solar Energy Project; the 709 MW Imperial Valley Solar Project; the 370 MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System Project; the 500 MW Palen Solar Power Project; and the 150 MW Rice Solar Energy Project.

Over 30 thermal projects are on the books nationwide, according to solar thermal expert Brett Prior at GTM Research.

--Canadian Solar has become an official sponsor of the San Francisco Giants, thereby deepening the solar-sports connection. Earlier this year, Yingli sponsored the World Cup. Roller derby teams in the Bay Area have been scouring for a sponsor.

--JA Solar said it signed contracts to sell 500 more megawatts in 2011. Last month, JA said it would increase production capacity to 1.8 gigawatts from the previous target of 1.5 gigawatts by the end of the year.

--Finally, SunPower said it would plant 200 megawatts of solar in Italy in 2011, nearly double the 108 megawatts SunPower will plant this year.

Charging stations are being erected all over the country.

Coulomb has a $37 million ChargePoint America program that will help put them all over the place. In just two years, the company has shipped 850 stations to cities around the world, including New York City, Orlando, Detroit, Amsterdam, Sydney, and Dublin.

Today, Coulomb Technologies announced it has raised $15 million in Series C funding. The new funds come from previous investors -- Rho Ventures, Voyager Capital, Siemens Venture Capital, and Hartford Ventures. Harbor Pacific Capital and LS Cable and LS Industrial Systems are newcomers.

"The money will help us expand the network. We have shipped 850 stations. ChargePoint America is installing 4,600 charging stations. This extra money will help enable that," said Anne Smith, a spokesperson for Coulomb.

These fuel points can charge any plug-in vehicle and can communicate through the company's technology and software network called the ChargePoint Network. By connecting customers to fuel stations through the network, Coulomb has set up an easy way to bill and authenticate each EV owner and his car. (Public charging will be a major topic at the Networked EV taking place November 9.)

Coulomb will be working with Leviton, Siemens, and Aker Wade to distribute their equipment to the home, which will open up options for home fueling.

The Department Energy project, ChargePoint America, is setting up 4,600 free home and public ChargePoint stations in nine areas of the United States: Los Angeles; New York; Austin, Texas; Detroit; Orlando, Fla.; Sacramento, Calif.; the San Jose and San Francisco Bay Area; Bellevue and Redmond, Wash.; and Washington, D.C.

With the introduction of electric cars and plug-in hybrids like the Leaf and the Volt, Coulomb is strategically partnering with three leading automobile makers: Smart USA, Ford, and Chevrolet.

It's not all sunshine from here. There is a big debate over whether we will even need extensive public charging facilities. Some argue that most people will charge at home and tap the energy flowing from their local utility instead of relying on public charging stations. Hence, these public charging stations might just be a psychological salve that may take years to pay off and may not be used that much.

"We see it as very important from a psychological perspective and for places outside the normal commute patterns, but our focus will remain on residential charging," Rich Steinberg from BMW said recently. "In megacities, [public charging] makes sense, but not so much in most of the U.S."

Another issue: consumers might be able to just top off at work or at parking garages under a "pay-by-the-kilowatt" model. Recently, California removed one EV charging hurdle, giving virtually almost anyone the right to sell power for EVs. Coulomb and others want to sell power under subscription services.

"Coulomb continues to make great strides as an emerging leader in the EV infrastructure space. They are quickly expanding their footprint and building a compelling, sustainable business," Mark Leschly, Managing Partner of Rho Ventures said in a statement.

Nevertheless, the process of building out the infrastructure continues and these charging companies will play a huge role in the effort to get more cars to charge during off-peak times, regardless of whether the charging station is at home or in the parking lot of Guitar Warehouse. Better Place is working with the Hawaiian government to build switch stations, so car owners can have a place to turn in their depleted car batteries in exchange for fully charged ones.

While most biomass-to-biofuels systems burn feedstocks as the first step in biofuel production, Sundrop uses concentrated solar energy to gasify the feedstocks into syngas that is then made into advanced biofuels.  According to the company's website, the very high temperatures of CSP create efficiencies in the process:

At the center of the Sundrop Fuels process is our proprietary SurroundsunTM technology, a solar-thermal biomass gasifier that generates temperatures of more than 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,370 degrees Fahrenheit) from the concentrated power of thousands of solar heliostat mirrors.  Using solar energy to drive the endothermic gasification reaction ensures the most efficient use of biomass feedstock to produce liquid advanced biofuels like renewable "green" gasoline.

Sundrop owns at least one U.S. patent and two pending U.S. patent applications relating to its solar gasification technology.   

U.S. Patent No. 7,140,181 ('181 Patent), is entitled "Reactor for solar processing of slightly-absorbing or transparent gases" and is directed to methods for solar-powered processing of gases.

The methods described in the '181 Patent comprise directing concentrated sunlight through an aperture (202) into a spherical chamber (203), where the energy is partially absorbed by the walls (201) of the chamber and partially reflected. 

Process gas is pumped into the chamber (203) through the aperture (202) and heated by contact with the walls (201) and by infrared radiation from the walls so the gas partially dissociates. 

The gas exits through exit holes (204) and is quickly cooled by its contact with cooling surface (205) to prevent recombination.  It then flows out exhaust tube (206).

Sundrop's two published patent applications are U.S. Application Pub. No. 2009/0313886, entitled "Various methods and apparatus for solar assisted chemical and energy processes" ('886 Application) and U.S. Application Pub. No. 2010/0000874, entitled "Various methods and apparatus for solar assisted fuel production" ('874 Application).

The '886 and '874 Applications are directed to solar-assisted water splitting processes and apparatus to supply synthesis gas for creating a hydrocarbon liquid fuel.  A watter splitter (102) supplies H2 gas to a reverse water gas shift (RWGS) unit (104) that generates synthesis gas for production of liquid fuel such as methanol.   

 

The RWGS unit (104) includes a  reverse water gas shift reactor (106) and a liquid fuel synthesis reactor (108) that forms methanol from carbon dioxide hydrogenation. 

A field of heliostats (134), or sun tracking mirrors, reflects sunlight onto the heat exchanger (122) through a window (138) in the RWGS unit (104).  The solar energy drives the water-splitting process.

According to this Ecogeek piece, by using concentrated solar energy, Sundrop's process more than doubles the yield of fuel that can be produced using ordinary biomass burning processes to 100-125 gallons of fuel per ton of biomass.

--

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, where he works in the Intellectual Property and Climate Change & Clean Technologies practice groups.

The more things that are connected to the Internet, the more valuable Google's services could become.

That's what Norio Murakami, the chairman emeritus of Google Japan, asserted in an interview with Nikkei Electronics. The Internet of Things -- the futuristic web that will let refrigerators, TVs, demand response services and air conditioners talk and negotiate amongst themselves -- will create more opportunities for search services.

Although many sniffed at the automated home of the future a few years ago, it's coming. Appliance standards now being hammered out in the U.S. will lead to internet-enabled appliances in the foreseeable future. Several Japanese manufacturers, meanwhile, are readying dishwashers, fridges, fuel cells and LED controllers for worldwide consumption. (Next month, Greentech Media will chair a committee to pick the best smart grid and green IT technologies at Ceatec, Japan's version of CES. More on the conference here.)

Murakami also added that Google has no interest in large-scale power distribution or monopolizing data.

"We hear that a lot lately. 'The Google Conspiracy.' Needless to say, it has no basis in fact," he said. "Let me say right here and now that the information we collect belongs to the consumers. It doesn't belong to us in any way. The information is borrowing our cloud temporarily, but the consumer has to decide how it will be used.We have no plans to launch new services utilizing the power-related information we collect. That's a job for a different company."

For more on the story, please go to TechOn.

It could slash the cost of wind power and greatly expand the size of the global footprint for wind.  

And, no, airborne wind power advocates add, they aren't crazy.

Airborne wind power -- a concept based on devices that can harvest power from the upper layers of the atmosphere or even the jet stream-- remains largely in the conceptual stage, but progress is occurring. Companies like Makani Wind Power, Magenn Power and Joby Energy have built scaled-down models and have conducted a number of tests. Next year, Joby hopes to launch a 500-kilowatt multi-wing turbine.

If all goes well, the crawl toward commercialization within a decade or so could begin. The challenges involved in such a process promise to be hot topics at the Airborne Wind Energy Conference taking place at Stanford on September 28 and 29.

A major part of the attractiveness of airborne devices lies in raw materials, says Archan Padmanabhan, director of business development at Joby. A standard wind turbine requires a massive amount of steel, concrete, aluminum and other materials. In all, they average 96 tons of materials per megawatt.

"It looks like we can get down to 20 tons per megawatt," he said, which in turn could lead to capital costs of $1.20 per watt or less.

Airborne devices can also function well in a wide variety of geographies because terrestrial obstacles -- mountains, downtown clusters, etc. -- don't interfere nearly as much with the strong winds of the upper atmosphere or jet stream. Joeben Bevirt, Joby's CEO, has said that tropospheric winds hold as much as 870 terawatts of potential power. Once aloft, these devices would ideally be kept in the sky by the power of the wind or with batteries charged from the power harvested from the wind.

Yes, but what about the Skylab problem of debris falling from the sky? To address this challenge, Joby wants to build a winged structure arrayed with 14 propellers tethered to the earth with a cord, while Makani has envisioned a glider-like wing.

It's a huge concern. To that end, these companies are trying to fine-tune guidance and recovery systems that would permit an airborne craft to navigate a safe path back to Earth. Companies are also scrutinizing the dynamics of the tether and how the tether will behave in the different types of weather and atmospheric conditions it will experience. Air pressures and moisture content in the air will vary significantly along the length of the tether.

Like the wave and tidal companies, the airborne industry is so new that basic design standards don't exist. Magenn, for instance, is building a blimp that looks like a medical implant that has been turned into a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float. Others more closely resemble kites.

The technology divides along six parameters. Will the craft be deployed one kilometer in the air, or higher, in the more rapidly flowing jet stream? (Right now, FAA rules and the current state of technology mean that the companies are clustering around the 1 kilometer opportunity). Next, is it a lighter-than-air aircraft like Magenn's or not? Third, is the power generated in the atmosphere, or does the generator sit on the ground?

While skepticism exists, interest is picking up, particularly in Europe and on island nations. Both the Department of Defense and ARPA-E (the R&D agency inside the Department of Energy) are examining various atmospheric concepts. Makani received some investment funds from Google, but it also experienced layoffs earlier this year.

Speakers at the Airborne Wind Energy Conference will include scientists from Europe and the U.S. national labs, as well as officials from the FAA.

Forget the smart meter. The new race in smart grid is to make the brain the field.

Echelon today announced the Echelon Control System (ECoS), a software platform, along with Edge Control Node 7000 series, hardware boxes animated by the control system. Together, the software and hardware allow utilities to monitor things like voltage fluctuation and outages and, ideally, to use this information to control the spread of outages or shave peak power.

The Control Node sits between the medium voltage assets, like capacitor banks, and the lower voltage assets, like the low-voltage transformers that stream electricity to your home, will allow other ECoS-enabled equipment to fill in other gaps. The software also normalizes the data from various assets to make it more coherent to utilities.

"There is nothing really out there right now that brings the low and medium voltage assets together," said Echelon director of marketing Steve Nguyen.

The software and hardware are compatible with a wide variety of communications protocols and also work with older types of meters. Mega-utility Duke Energy will be the first customer. Initial orders already total $14.5 million. Trials begin later this year, with production shipments starting in the second half of 2011.

Duke signed a $15.8 million contract for smart meters with room to expand with Echelon last year.

Devices like the Control Node and ECoS are expected to grow in importance as smart meters proliferate and utilities are asked to get consumers to curb power consumption. Simply put, there's going to be a lot more data and many more commands crossing between utilities and their customers and much of the processing and control is going to have to take place in the field.

Enter the multifunctional, multi-standard magic box that can communicate on standard protocols and pretty much get along with all of the other equipment on the grid. SmartSynch's GridRouter, unfurled in 2008, was the first device in this market, but others are following. Cisco is building a standards-based armada of grid routers and software -- last week it linked an alliance with meter maker Itron and bought mesh networking specialist Arch Rock.

IBM, meanwhile, has talked about the need to put quad-core processor servers on power poles and elsewhere in the field to manage smart meter data and take corrective, automated action, which is basically the same thing. Siemens has similar equipment animated with the Grid Analyzer from National Instruments.

While it's hard to say which companies will ultimately dominate this market, Echelon certainly has some built-in advantages. As one of the leading producers of power line networking equipment, it has been selling equipment to utilities for years. While not popular in the U.S. because it costs more than mesh, power line has shown strength in Europe. Italy's Enel has the largest smart grid network in the world and it's based on power line. Some cities in the U.S. have also experimented with power line to control LED street lights.

And here's something for you conspiracy nuts. Echelon was founded by A.C. "Mike" Markkula, who continues to serve as vice chairman. The hyper-secretive Markkula (I once had to do a story on him -- it was like getting information on the CIA) was Apple's chairman for years. Apple is contemplating home energy services.

 

The braintrust at Greentech Media suggested I write an article on the top ten solar venture capital firms. Even despite what Sanjay said in this article.

As I started writing, I realized that the normal metrics for grading VCs -- IRR, quality of exits, etc. -- don't apply to today's solar investors, at least not in any meaningful way.  The fact is that very little, if any, of the billions of VC dollars put into solar in the last few years have yielded the type of results that VCs look for. 

You'd have to go back to SunPower, Suntech, First Solar, Evergreen Solar and GT Solar to cite solar firms that have yielded successful IPO exits. Those companies, save for Evergreen, were not funded by your standard Sand Hill Road-type venture firms. The Communist Party was Suntech's largest investor while members of the Walton Family sustained First Solar. T.J. Rodgers rescued SunPower with a $750,000 investment (written on a personal check) in 2001 after the company got rejected up and down the valley.

There has been some M&A.  Applied Materials has made some strategic acquisitions, as have Suntech, SunPower and First Solar.  But few of those acquisitions were VC-funded, and few yielded the 10X returns that VCs bank on.  

So, absent real financial metrics, I am free to list ten VC firms that invest in solar and select them for testicular fortitude, style points and sheer hype and vision.

Here we go:

Nth Power

Nth Power is one of the earliest VC investors in cleantech with pioneering partners Nancy Floyd and Tim Woodward.  They can actually boast funding and taking a solar company public with a VC-sized multiple before most of the players on this list started investing in the sector (Evergreen).  And they've chosen to avoid investing in thin film altogether.

• Cyanto: HCPV
• Evergreen Solar: silicon cells (public)
• Soliant: rooftop CPV
• Tioga Energy: commercial PPAs
• Xerocoat: AR coatings

Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins as investors in Ausra, can certainly point to that firm's acquisition by Areva as an exit, if not on the order of Cerent.  Ray Lane, a partner at Kleiner told me that they were going to let Ausra "get caught" in what amounted to a modest bidding contest for the concentrating solar power firm.  Two, both firms are committed to solar and are putting their money where their mouths are by investing across the solar value chain -- and in KP's case, across early and late stages.  Both Vinod Khosla and KP's John Doerr are thought leaders and vocal boosters for intelligent greentech policy.

Kleiner Perkins' solar portfolio:

• Alta Devices: Solar cells that aim to be 30 percent efficient at a module cost below 50 cents per watt; based on compound-semiconductors
• Amonix: Utility-scale concentrated photovoltaics
• Enphase: Microinverters
• Kotak Urja: India-based solar PV and solar thermal
• MiaSolé: Thin-film CIGS
• Solexel: 3D, high efficiency mono-crystalline silicon cell 
• Sundrop Fuels:  Solar driven gasification
• Solasta -- a-Si in a nano-coax structure (shut down)

Khosla Ventures' solar portfolio:

• PVT: Integrated system provides electric and heating for homes
• Cogenra (formerly SkyWatch Energy): solar technology that produces electricity and hot water.
• Stion: Thin-film CIGS

And this being KP and Khosla -- you can imagine that there are a few stealth firms not yet exposed to the sun.  More on KP's John Doerr in an article later today.

VantagePoint Venture Partners

VantagePoint thinks big and they think long-term -- in solar and in their other greentech investments like Better Place. When the firm invested in BrightSource Energy, now a force in solar thermal power plants, they made sure they had the resources and the commitment from the start. They knew they'd need billions of dollars and prominent industry partners and EPCs like Bechtel.  According to VantagePoint CEO Alan Salzman, their view is that the company has to scale and that "there's no cheap way to get to one gigawatt."

VantagePoint's solar portfolio:

• BrightSource Energy -- solar thermal power plants
• MiaSolé -- CIGS thin-film photovoltaics
• Senergen -- depositing silane onto free-form metallurgical-grade silicon substrates made via thermal spraying (shut down)
• SolarCentury -- EU-based solar integrator

The firm continues to look for more solar investments.

Firelake Capital  

Unlike many VC firms that try to limit their exposure within any one particular technological field, Firelake has four investments in thin-film solar, two of which are CIGS.  One of the 20 or so CIGS startups is going to figure this materials systems out and Firelake wants to back them.  This shows perseverance and stubbornness in the face of reality, both excellent traits in an investor.

Firelake Capital's solar portfolio:

• Advent Solar: back contact solar cells (acquired by AMAT, although hardly a success story)
• MiaSolé: Thin-film CIGS  
• NanoSolar: Thin-film CIGS
• Solexant:  PV panels based on CdTe semiconducting nanoparticles    
• Thin Silicon: Advanced thin-film photovoltaics 

Quercus Trust

Quercus Trust is the investment arm of wealthy philanthropist David Gelbaum and gets a mention on this list by sheer profligacy.  Here's a list of some of Gelbaum's solar investments in companies both private and public, credible and not-so-credible, with due diligence seemingly done with a Magic Eight Ball.

Quercus Trust's solar portfolio:

• 3G Solar: Israel-based dye solar cells
  
• Lightwave Power: plasmonics and photonic crystals
  
• Ascent Solar: flexible CIGS solar cells (publicly-held)                             
• DayStar Technologies: financially troubled CIGS PV module vendor (publicly-held)
• Emcore: triple junction solar cells for CPV (publicly-held)
• Applied Solar (formerly Open Energy): bankrupt BIPV
• Entech Solar: CPV (publicly-held)                                      
• Spire Solar: solar manufacturing equipment (publicly-held)
• WorldWater and Solar: portable water pumps and irrigation systems powered by PV
• Sencera: amorphous thin-film silicon modules
• Nanoptek: solar thermal dishes that use the sun's energy to produce hydrogen
• Promethean Power: solar refrigeration                             
• Cyrium Technologies: III/V materials for CPV
  
• Akeena Solar: solar installer  (publicly-held)
• Enviromission: aims to build a 1-km tower in Australia that will capture hot wind updrafts
• Nano Si Solar: particles for increasing the efficiency of solar cells
• RSI Silicon: solar grade silicon

Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) has a broad portfolio of cleantech investments, but only three solar companies in its portfolio that we know of. They're on the list because despite NanoSolar's current status, MDV's cleantech investors saw the potential for thin-film technology and had the vision of a printing model as opposed to a wafer model as the future of solar. The team recognized that early, long before the rest of the VC clan came around to that way of thinking. NanoSolar's future is uncertain but the vision of a disruptive solar manufacturing process via printing remains sound.

MDV's solar portfolio:

• Energy Innovations: HCPV
• Recurrent Energy: Commercial PPA provider
• NanoSolar: Thin film CIGS

Technology Partners makes the list by virtue of its selective eye and prominent public face.  The cleantech partner at the firm, Ira Ehrenpreis, has been a vocal and ubiquitous champion of cleantech VC investing long before it was fashionable.  The firm has chosen to co-invest with Kleiner Perkins in two potentially disruptive technologies, Alta and Solexel.  And Ira has made an investment in Abound Solar, a cadmium telluride solar module company aiming to be "Second Solar."  Abound is the recent recipient of a $400M federal loan guarantee and looks to be scaling fast.

Technology Partners' solar portfolio:

• Abound Solar: cadmium telluride-based solar panels
• Alta Devices: Solar cells targeting 30% efficiency at a module cost below 50 cents per watt based on high-efficiency compound-semiconductor materials 
• Solexel: 3D, high-efficiency mono-crystalline silicon cell

Rockport Capital and CMEA get demerits for their Solyndra investments, although we'll hail them as geniuses if Solyndra recovers.  Rockport redeems itself with its early investment in microinverter firm Enphase, and CMEA gets a place on the list for its investment in Solaria, both companies that have a fighting chance of long-term survival in the bloodily competitive solar market.

Rockport's solar portfolio:

• Enphase: microinverters  
• Evergreen Solar: financially challenged ribbon silicon solar wafer manufacturer (publicly held)
• Nanogram: laser reactive deposition process (sold)
• Satcon: large-scale solar inverters (publicly held)
• Soliant: rooftop CPV
• Solyndra: CIGS in glass cylinders
• Tioga Energy: commercial PPAs

CMEA's solar portfolio

• Solaria: low concentration PV modules
• Solyndra: CIGS in glass cylinders
• StealthCo: low-cost thin film

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) joins the list by virtue of volume.  They've made at least 11 solar investments, some questionable (Konarka, Heliovolt) and some inspired (Suniva).

NEA's solar portfolio:

• 1BOG: solar aggregator, price negotiator and educator
• Astrowatt:thin silicon wafers, silicon-on-metal technology
• Azuray: microinverters
• Bandgap Engineering: nanowire-enhanced silicon
• Konarka: organic solar cells
• Heliovolt: CIGS solar panels
• Solar Junction: CPV semiconductors
• Skyline Solar:  medium CPV with silicon
• Solar Storage: 24-hour enterprise-scale solar power
• SolFocus: CPV
• Suniva: high-efficiency c-Si

This is a subjective list and there are plenty of other investors making strong bets in solar  (DFJ, NGEN, Battery, CalCEF, Bessemer, et al.).  We'll be able to make a list based on real returns and true success and failure in a few years.

I'm not sure what to make of the company I just interviewed -- New Energy Technologies (OTC BB: NENE.OB).  And more broadly, I wonder what thinly traded, small-market-cap, over-the-counter traded stocks can add to the advancement of renewable energy markets.

For context, Investopedia explains Over-The-Counter (OTC) stocks:

In general, the reason for which a stock is traded over-the-counter is usually because the company is small, making it unable to meet exchange listing requirements. Also known as "unlisted stock", these securities are traded by broker-dealers who negotiate directly with one another over computer networks and by phone.  OTC stocks are generally unlisted stocks which trade on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) or on the pink sheets. Be very wary of some OTC stocks, however; the OTCBB stocks are either penny stocks or are offered by companies with bad credit records.

I spoke with the CEO of New Energy Technologies (formerly called Octillion), John Conklin, and he seemed genuine enough.  But in reading the SEC document on the firm (linked here), one learns of management issues, financial issues, going concern warnings from auditors, immense technical risks and an immature and unformed business plan and value proposition.  The firm has zero revenue and will continue to have zero revenue for the foreseeable future.

The company is essentially a revenueless incubator for two disparate technologies, organic solar cell technology licensed from the University of South Florida and a set of kinetic energy harvesting techniques.

Kinetic energy harvesting from autos and heavy vehicles

The firm looks to harvest kinetic energy of vehicles in three areas: 1) slow-moving vehicles at toll plazas, rest areas, traffic calming areas, drive-thrus, weigh scales, and other roadway points, 2) vehicles moving at highway speed and 3) heavier vehicles.

The systems are intended to be non-disruptive to the driver and are embedded into the driving surface, parallel to the direction of moving traffic. As drivers pass over the deformable surface material, their vehicles’ tires depress the surface, and kinetic energy from the vehicle is captured for conversion to electricity.

The firm refers to the technology as ‘peristaltic action’: these are fluid-driven systems that rely on the flow of pressurized fluids and avoid the use of moving mechanical parts. 

The company’s system has undergone durability field-tests at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., a  Burger King in Hillside, NJ, and a Holiday Inn Express in Baltimore, MD. 

The firm envisions that similar mechanical and fluid-driven peristaltic systems could be designed to generate electricity from the motion of foot traffic, cargo trains, passenger railcars, and aircraft.  Here's a link to a video demonstration of one of their applications.

Organic solar cells

The firm's solar technology is from researchers at the University of South Florida and involves coating glass surfaces with "ultra-small, functional solar cells."  Applications are targeted at BIPV in residential and commercial windows; the company claims that the cells can harvest natural as well as artificial light.  More details can be found in a paper recently published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy of the American Institute of Physics (J. Lewis, J. Zhang and X. Jiang, 1, 1301, January 2009).

The SEC document states that "SolarWindow technologies ... enable see-thru windows to generate electricity by ‘spraying’ their glass surfaces with the world’s smallest known solar cells. These solar coatings are less than 1/10th the thickness of ‘thin’ films and make use of the world’s smallest functional solar cells."

But do a little bit of digging, and one learns that the efficiency of the solar cell is 0.42 percent under 1 sun irradiance.  Which means, roughly, that coating the entire skyscraper with these OSCs would allow it to charge a few cell phones.

Here's a link to an article on Konarka, another OSC firm, that has already taken more than $150 million in investor funding.  Even with $150 million, OSCs are difficult to get to market, since they tend to fail in sunlight.

Other OTC firms in renewable energy

Here are a few other OTC firms active in renewable energy.  They seem to share a lack of resources, a lack of revenue, and frequently shifting business plans.

PetroAlgae (OTCBB: PALG) recently submitted paperwork for a proposed $200 million public offering on the NASDAQ.  The firm has a $1 billion market cap. PetroAlgae actually no longer grows algae (it grows lemna or duckweed) and has no intention of supplying petroleum, despite their name. The company has a technology licensing business plan, zero dollars in revenue and a management team with a spotty record.  Its only operation is a small-scale demo facility in Florida.  In a questionable algae biofuels market, PetroAlgae is not the company to inspire confidence in institutional investors. Here's the S-1.  Prediction: IPO withdrawn "because of market conditions." (GTM Research has a research report on third and fourth generation biofuels available here).

xSunx (XSNX.OB) is a CIGS photovoltaic development company with little revenue that used to be an amorphous silicon photovoltaic development company with little revenue.  The firm purports to be using hard-disk-drive equipment to fabricate their solar cells (like AQT, but AQT is actually building cells).  The firm's CTO hails from CIGS vendor Global Solar Energy.

Applied Solar (APSO.OB, formerly Open Energy): A bankrupt BIPV solar roof tile and architectural solar company now owned by the Quercus Trust and 21 Ventures.

Entech (ENSL.OB) now has major investor David Gelbaum of the Quercus Trust as CEO. The firm builds solar skylights and CPV equipment.  Total revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2010 amounted to $45,000, compared to $2,113,000 in the same period in 2009. The decline in revenues reflects Entech’s decision to transition from the flat-plate solar installation business to the CPV business.

Colorado's San Luis Valley is a solar energy developer's dream. Thanks to its altitude (roughly 7,000 feet above sea level) and the cloud-blocking capabilities of the surrounding snow-capped mountains, it gets more photons from the sun than just about anywhere else in the world. According to the Colorado Governor's Energy Office, a photovoltaic array covering just one-third of the valley could produce enough electricity for the entire country's needs.

Yet there has been almost no solar development in the valley. That's because there's no way to get the electricity out of the area and into the nearby population centers of the front range cities of Denver and Colorado Springs. A recent attempt by Xcel Energy and its partners to build a transmission line linking the two areas has been delayed because of opposition by a billionaire hedge fund manager who owns a ranch that the line would cross.

An oft-repeated phrase in the energy world holds: "If you love renewables, you have to at least like transmission." Apparently, nobody likes transmission. It's ugly, time-consuming and requires individual negotiations with hundreds of landowners. Despite calls for a nationwide transmission grid -- a system of electricity superhighways that would bring renewable energy from areas where the wind blows (the Great Plains) and the sun shines (the desert Southwest, such as in the San Luis Valley) -- from industry luminaries like venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and American Electric Power CEO Michael Morris, no ground has been broken.

Cost isn't the issue. Building a network of high-voltage transmission lines capable of producing enough electricity to cover 50 percent of the country's energy needs would cost somewhere between $60 billion and $200 billion. That's a hefty sum, but relatively small when one is talking about the trillions of dollars invested every decade into energy infrastructure.

The real problem is one of process. Building a new transmission line requires navigating a tangled web of regulators, financing pitfalls and vocal resistance from local landowners. All told, a new transmission line project can take up to 10 years to complete. Building a nationwide transmission network in this country is simply too daunting for just about anyone to accomplish under current rules.

But big ideas can become reality. Thirteen years ago, South Korea set out to build a nationwide network of wires to advance a home-grown industry. Amidst a severe financial crisis in 1997, the government of South Korea initiated a plan for a broadband internet network that would reach 98% of the country's citizens (this was at a time when most countries had fewer than 10% of their citizens hooked up to broadband). Within two years, the country had completed the broadband network.

How did the Korean government accomplish such an ambitious plan? Not through high taxes or mass confiscations of property. Instead, it assembled a consortium of stakeholders into a national group led by government bureaucrats and then provided a stew of loan guarantees and tax credits to incentivize the project.

If the United States government applied the Korean model to the construction of a national renewable transmission grid, the overall cost to the government would be less than $20 billion -- most of which would be doled out in the form of loan guarantee credit subsidies and investment tax credits. Much of that money would eventually come back to federal coffers in the form of increased tax revenue from the renewable energy projects that would be spawned as a result of the program. Under such a program, the system could be built in less than a decade.

But that would be just the beginning of the success story. Let's revisit what happened in South Korea. In 1998, while the broadband network was being built, the Korean IT industry produced about $25 billion in revenue.

By 2008, the country's IT industry revenues shot up to more than $110 billion. South Korea became a hot spot for technology development and manufacturing, and part of the reason for that was the cachet of having the world's fastest and most pervasive internet network.

A nationwide renewable transmission grid could have a similar impact on the renewable energy industry in the U.S. Any wind or solar developer will tell you that the lack of transmission lines is a major reason why large-scale development is on hold. Solve the transmission problem -- with government oversight and credit protection, but paid for mostly with private funds -- and you could see an explosion in the build-out of renewable energy in the U.S.

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Sam Jaffe is Research Manager for renewable and distributed energy at IDC Energy Insights, a global research and advisory firm. He is also the co-author, with Myung Oak Kim, of The New Korea: An Inside Look at South Korea's Economic Rise (Amacom, April 2010).

 

Black silicon has been around for so long, it's hard to remember it hasn't come out yet.

'Black silicon' refers to silicon wafers rutted with billions of tiny, nano-scale pits. The irregular surface effectively traps a larger percentage of photons by preventing light from being reflected, similar to how holes in ceiling tiles absorb sound. In theory, this gives solar cells made from black silicon a higher potential for efficiency because more of the sunlight that strikes them can be turned into electricity. Regular silicon solar cells are expected to max out at 25-percent efficiency.

Wafers and cells from black silicon look black, instead of a shimmery gray, because less light bounces off the surface and into your eye. (SunPower has been a leader in texturing surfaces for maximum efficiency.)

Sionyx, a spin-out from Harvard, revealed a technique for producing black silicon a few years ago with brief pulses of lasers and sulfur gases. Researchers in Munich have bored holes into silicon wafers with gold.

Late last week, NREL researchers discussed a cheaper way to produce black silicon using chloroauric acid instead of colloidal gold. The researchers initially were trying to refine the results from Munich, but instead stumbled on a cheaper way to produce black silicon. The NREL technique can also achieve results fairly quickly and without an expensive vacuum manufacturing environment.

"You take a beaker, put a silicon wafer in, pour in the chloroauric acid, pour in the hydrofluoric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and wait," said Howard Branz, the principal investigator, in a prepared statement.

Unwanted reflections on the NREL-produced black silicon were reduced to less than two percent, even better than the three percent to seven percent achieved in Munich.

Some of the next steps will include trying to figure out how to optimize the etching process. So far, the group has found that the best results occurred when the holes average around 500 nanometers deep with diameters slightly smaller than the smallest wavelength of light.

NREL, like all of the national labs, has been accused of failing to act aggressively to license its technology, but that has improved in recent years. If the results of this research can be amplified, black silicon could one day end up in roof-mounted solar panels.

Last week, meter data management player Ecologic Analytics added another major customer to its roster when it announced that it won a deal to manage the data coming from 535,000 gas, electric and water meters for Colorado Springs Utilities . The Ecologic Analytics MDM is already being used by PG&E in one of the largest smart meter rollouts in North America. The latest deal adds Springs Utilities to a client roster that also includes Indiana Power and Light. 

Ecologic Analytics is one of the pioneers in managing time interval data from advanced meters.  The company cut its teeth on Puget Sound Energy way back in 2000 when it implemented what was at that time the largest time-of-day pricing program in the United States.  Since that time, Ecologic Analytics has steadily built its platform to make it suitable for large-scale, mission-critical smart grid assignments.  Key strengths include high throughput error checking for meter readings and integrated outage management capabilities to deal with smart meter "alarm storms" caused when thousands or even millions of meters suddenly issue an SOS -- a technical challenge utilities never faced in the old days when outages were reported by telephone and inbound callers could be put on hold with nice music.  See my recent meter data management report for an in-depth analysis of meter data management technologies. 

I had a chance to catch up with John Galloway, EVP of Sales and Marketing, about the deal, the market, and Home Area Networks (HAN), which many consider to be the final frontier of the smart grid.  First, the Springs Utility deal.  According to Galloway, plans include pulling multiple commodities into a common customer view.  "This is part of a broader initiative that includes programs to further enable customer energy management and distributed renewable generation.  Springs Utilities wants to engage customers across the board on multi-commodity consumption."

A separate (Greentech) observation to keep in mind: the smart grid isn't just about electricity.  Water management and use is becoming a big deal in the arid West and drought-stricken Southeast.  This is an oft-overlooked aspect of the smart grid.  Expect advanced water meter rollouts to accelerate and MDM systems to be called on by municipalities to manage water data, and to help homeowners identify leaks and pre-empt nasty surprises.  Time-of-use water data comes in handy to enforce water restrictions as droughts and new aquifer draining residential developments.   Rolling lawn watering restrictions, including outright bans or odd-even rotations are becoming the norm during hot summers.  Smart water meters provide a remote monitoring solution to enforce restrictions and meter data management systems are needed to turn the data into actionable information.

Galloway sees strong demand for meter data management systems.  "The market is definitely heating up.  We have a number of proposals out and we are optimistic that we will have an opportunity to participate.  There's better clarity on how to apply Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) money."  But SGIG sweepstakes winners are not the only ones moving in the market. According to Galloway, "Colorado Springs is a good example of a project not tied to the Smart Grid Investment Grant.  The technology makes sense, and it's the right time." 

So far, so good, right?  Smart meters are great and MDM is certainly a necessity, but when will consumers get detailed consumption data that will help them put their homes on energy diets? 

This is a big unanswered question, especially for utilities busily rolling out smart meter deployments.  Many MDM vendors are working with their utility customers to build web portals that deliver consumption data to consumers.  This is a good thing.  But utilities are expending a lot of time and money to deliver one aggregate consumption data point for each home, albeit every 15 minutes or hourly.  Unfortunately, one data point is not enough for homeowners to monitor and rein in energy hogs like dehumidifiers, hot water heaters, and phantom power consumers like chargers, big-screen TVs on standby, and more.  For more granular consumption data, the consumer needs to turn to home energy management systems (an industry segment referred to vaguely as HAN or home area networking).  For now, HAN is a pricey, less-known corner of the power world with a confusing array of energy management gadgets and devices . 

Smart meters are a great enabler for utilities, but HAN provides a friendly consumer interface and the type of detailed data needed to understand and manage their home energy footprint.  These tangible consumer-facing benefits are largely absent in residential smart meter version 1.0.  By my reckoning, a hands-off industry approach to HAN is a bad idea and a recipe for failure.  After all, what good is a smart grid without smart homes -- and smart homeowners?  Smart meters are merely a gateway into the home; a first step in the journey to home energy management.  The industry needs to get to work figuring out how to bring consumers into the energy management game. If not, little ripples of consumer backlash against smart meter rollouts are liable to turn into a sea of discontent.  When it comes to satisfying fickle tech-savvy consumers, there is no rest for the weary. This is especially true for companies like Colorado Springs Utilities that promise consumer energy management solutions.