Blogs

Bloom Energy prepares its mysterious device

Hank Green — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:06:21 PDT

We first wrote about Bloom Energy back when there was next to nothing to know about them. The mystery was why one of the nation's largest venture capital firms was funding a guy who had invented a new kind of ultra-efficient fuel cell.

Fuel cells have lots of applications. But what brought Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers to the table?

We made a guess back then that it would be something having to do with home-power generation. Turns out we were 100% right on that count. And now Bloom Energy is nearly ready to unveil its mysterious product to the world.

A recent story in The New York Times discusses Bloom at length, and says that they're looking at commercialization within one or two years. That's good for investors, who've already dumped $250 million into Bloom. But we still have to wonder what Bloom is doing that requires 200 employees and all that cash.

Here's the short answer: Bloom Energy wants your house to be a power plant. They want the natural gas line to go straight into their ultra-efficient fuel cell, and then that fuel cell will provide exactly the amount of power you need. In places with smart grids, Bloom might even offer you the opportunity to make a profit by selling your electricity back to the grid during peak hours.

Because Bloom's fuel cells are nearly twice as efficient as natural gas peaking plants, and have 40% of the emissions, the little box would do more than save the environment; it would save you a lot of money.

Which is what they're betting on because, at first, these fuel cell packages will certainly cost tens of thousands of dollars. But this device has the power to completely eliminate the need for new power plants in America, so it's easy to see how a venture capital company could get excited about it. I certainly am.

Tubular solar panels slash costs, boost efficiency

Hank Green — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:10:07 PDT

There are a lot of reasons to think that flat solar panels would be the right way to go. The best way to capture sunlight is by being perpendicular to the sun and it's usually cheaper to make things flat than round. But the folks at Solyndra have discovered that this traditional wisdom might be a bit faulty.

First, as to the second point, when dealing with thin-film CIGS solar panels, cylindrical is just as good as flat. But the first point, concerning harvesting the maximum amount of sunlight, gets a little confusing.

The cylindrical solar panels (think of fluorescent tube lights...except in reverse) can absorb energy from every direction, and when combined with a white roof (which are now the only legal, flat roofs in California) can capture up to 20% more light than traditional solar panels. The other gigantic advantage is that they don't have to move to track the sun. The panels are always presenting some of their face directly perpendicular to the sun.

By removing solar-tracking and orientation from the equation, these systems can simply be laid onto roofs. Tracking solar panels have to be able to resist the force of strong winds, these will just lay flat and out of the way, reducing installation costs, which often comprise about half of the price of a solar project.

And with 30 billion square feet of flat roofs in America, this could be quite a market for cheap, clean electricity. Solyndra just announced that they've got $1.2 billion in contracts throughout Europe and America, and I can't imagine that going anywhere but up.

Via Scientific American

A profusion of green jobs is just a carbon cap away

Sheryl Canter — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:56:16 PDT

This Sunday's New York TimesMagazine had a cover story on green investment titled "Capitalism to the Rescue." We've mentioned in other posts that venture capital investment in clean energy is on the rise. This article was interesting in that it profiled one particular venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins. The author interviewed the firm's partners about why they see clean energy as such a good investment.

To start with, explained partner Randy Komisar, the current energy market is so large and outdated that "green-tech" is a huge and relatively low-risk opportunity. And we're not, as many think, waiting for the new inventions to come. We're waiting for federal policy to give private investment incentive. That is, we're waiting for a mandatory carbon cap.

Many great technologies have already been developed. But, says partner Bill Joy, they're "not yet commercialized because they had been frozen by the low price of oil. The innovation had occurred, but they hadn't been deployed." Using the example of green-tech firm Ausra:

A price on carbon could, in one stroke, make Ausra's carbon-free solar electricity even cheaper than coal- or gas-powered electricity, which would both rise in cost because they produce CO₂; as a result, there would be virtually no limit to the demand for Ausra's power. That's how you get a green-tech Google.

Or as economist Jeffrey Sachs puts it, "The policy elicits the technology."

The most effective action the government can take is to set policy that gives incentive for private innovation. This is because (quoting Al Gore - also a partner) "more money is allocated in the private markets in one hour than in all of the budgets of all of the governments of the world in a year's time."

Why don't we hear more about these new inventions? Some are described in the article and many more in Fred Krupp's book, Earth: The Sequel. But most are kept under tight wraps because of their profit potential:

Last summer, the growing number of stealth companies involved with clean energy formed a kind of dark matter in the Silicon Valley universe, businesses that could not be seen yet nevertheless exerted a discernible gravitational pull. Executives would suddenly leave jobs at established companies to join ventures with no official name.

When brought to scale, these enterprises will have a wonderfully energizing effect on our economy:

Amid economic hardship and turmoil within the financial-services industry, such efforts could also contribute to a profusion of green jobs in technology as well as in manufacturing.

So what are we waiting for?

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Self-powered light switch has no wires

Hank Green — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:25:00 PDT

There's a new way of wiring your lights ... and it doesn't involve wires. Pretty cool actually. Right now, your light switch has a physical connection to your light. When you flip the switch, a circuit is completed and the light turns on.

But connecting every light to every light switch basically requires twice as much wiring for a house's lighting system. That's just dumb.

Since the advent of remote control, people have been trying to figure out a way to have a light switch turn a light on and off without having to be physically connected to the light. Unfortunately, this has always required some kind of battery (to power the remote) and that battery would invariably die.

But now, EnOcean (a company that specializes in pulling power from ambient sources) has figured out a way to have the light switch be powered by you.

Every time you flip the switch, a tiny generator creates a tiny charge. That tiny charge powers a tiny remote control that sends out a tiny signal that can be received by the light. All from the "power" of your flipping. Pretty cool.

The first adopters of the technology will be folks looking to retrofit old (possibly historically significant) buildings. But peel-and-stick, no-wiring-needed electronics are needed everywhere. And having them be self-powering is a true green innovation.

Via GreenLight

What the current turmoil means for clean tech

Hank Green — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:19:12 PDT

As an EcoGeek, I spend a lot more time thinking about science and technology than savings and loans. But there's no doubt that a strong economy would help the cleantech revolution get a foothold. And that a weak economy will hurt it.

So I've been spending the last few days combing through all of my favorite investment resources, trying to figure out exactly what this "worst crash since the great depression" really means. How will it affect this burgeoning revolution, and what does that mean for the planet?

It seems that the news is mixed. Many have speculated that clean tech investments are one of the best places to be right now. And I have indeed seen that in my own portfolio. While there have been losses across the board, my clean tech and energy investments have lost the least. It seems that investors see clean energy as one place that will continue to grow despite an economic downturn.

This has, of course, been helped by the Senate's approval (finally) of an energy bill that includes tax incentives for clean technologies (mostly solar and carbon sequestration.)

But there's bad news too. Two articles I read today have got me believing that there simply will not be enough money to go around for the sector to grow as fast as it should. CNET's Greentech blog is saying that talk of a clean technology bubble is, in fact, a red herring distracting us from the true problem of not enough capital to get companies to full scale.

The problem, they say, isn't getting the start-ups funded initially. In fact, VC investment has never been stronger. The problem is bridging the gap from start-up to full commercialization. That requires strong investment in the form of IPOs or acquisitions. And in this climate, investors aren't looking to invest, and even the biggest corporations are having trouble getting loans for big purchases.

My go-to guy for clean tech stock news, Tom Konrad, is also worried. He deals exclusively in stocks, with no venture investments, so his concerns are more more based around current companies than start-ups. And his prognosis is grim: Sell everything that is going to need a new money. In short, Tom doesn't think that the investment will be easy to procure, so he's unloading stocks in young companies that are going to need capital.

Instead, he suggests buying up established companies with fingers in lots of clean pies already. Companies like Johnson Controls, Philips and even good ol' GE who have government contracts or large stakes in wind energy, energy efficiency, or power distribution.

To see all of Tom's top ten, check out his AltEnergyStocks blog.

All of this seems pretty wise to me ... and not entirely encouraging. While it's undeniable that clean tech offers the most obvious path toward continued economic growth, there's just no way to get people spending in a significant economic downturn.

The ultra-rich will keep their venture investments going, but they will likely be disappointed when it comes to IPOs or acquisitions in the next couple of years, and the value of little alternative energy companies who's stock prices are based on projected growth, not current revenue, will probably flounder for a few years.

I'm calling this some pretty bad news, especially since we can't afford a delay on a lot of this stuff, as investors or as inhabitants of planet Earth. If the government isn't able to take a leadership stance on carbon markets and subsidies because of the current turmoil, that would be a true disaster.

If they do, then I can see clean technology leading us out of this mess a lot sooner than most people are predicting. If they don't, then we're going to have to wait far too long for the rise of clean technology. And it's possible that stronger foreign markets will beat us to that particular punch, possibly making American markets (and a lot of our companies) surprisingly obsolete.

Queen Elizabeth buys world's largest wind turbine

Hank Green — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:29:09 PDT

She can afford it, but it's still cool that the Queen of England just commissioned the world's largest wind turbine. When it's completed in 2010, the turbine will produce 7.5 megawatts of power all on its own. That's roughly 1.5 megawatts more than today's largest turbine.

The Queen has more than enough land to build the turbine. In fact, she owns most of the shelf off of the U.K.'s coast. Previously, she's simply leased the land to wind turbine companies, but now she's investing her own money in the project.

The cost is going undisclosed for now, but we imagine it's quite high, especially since the turbine (at least at first) will be one-of-a-kind. It will be built by Clipper Wind, and is massively larger than anything else they have available today. The turbine will be 575 feet tall. That's more than 600 corgis standing on each other's backs.

The Queen's monetary endorsement of this technology is a big deal, especially as the U.K. has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions 20% by 2020.

But it's going to take a lot more than one massive wind turbine to do it. Maybe if the queen springs for 1,000 more of these babies, they'll have a fighting chance to meet their target.

Via EarthTimes

China planning electric vehicle charging stations

Peg Fong — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:37:56 PDT

China is rushing in to build its own network of electric charging stations. Xinhua, the government's official newspaper, announced last week that the State Grid Corporation, the world's largest electric power transmission and distribution company, is speeding up its plans to build electric car charging stations.

The stations will be located in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other large cities.

The power charging stations will be built as a pilot project to initially serve electric buses and sedans in a trial run, with plans to eventually cover the entire nation. Each station will cost the equivalent of about $37,000 to $44,000.

The country showcased its charging station network during the 2008 Beijing Olympics last month, during which it supplied power to 600 electric vehicles including 55 buses powered by electric-lithium-cells.Â

China hopes to bring in 10,000 fuel cell, electric and hybrid cars as well as infrastructure to power the vehicles in 10 chosen cities around the country within two years, according to the ministry of science and technology.

The experiment will help the government agencies work out policies for developing more new energy cars, says Wan Gan, the country's minister of science and technology. The minister hopes that within five years, alternative energy vehicles will account for one in every ten producted in China.

Via: Autoblog GreenÂ and China Daily

Ploggs tracks power usage, let you know wirelessly

Peg Fong — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:04:28 PDT

Wouldn't it be great if there were a simple device that could track your electricity usage, control when your appliances turn on and off, and connect to your computer or mobile device wirelessly? Well, it turns out it does exist ... only in Europe (so far.)

The Plogg is a plug-in device that monitors and logs data, hence the name. The information the Plogg records can be read via your phone, laptop or Blackberry -- anything with integrated Bluetooth. This way the Plogg can record and display your electricity usage with an absolute minimum of parts (and thus at minimum cost.)

The idea behind the Plogg, which is made by Energy Optimizers Ltd., is that the data gathered on your mobile device for viewing and storage may encourage consumers to recognize when energy is unnecessary or wasteful.

The device also has a remote switching mechanism that allows all appliances connected to the Plogg be turned off/on instantly, or automatically using timers controlled by the host computer or mobile device.

The Plogg costs Â£55 and the company is studying whether to make the plugs for the U.S. marketplace.

Via: Smart Meters

Only in Fairfax: First solar-powered multiplex cinema in U.S.

Jaymi Heimbuch — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:01:00 PDT

The Fairfax 5 Theater just installed a 27 kw PV system, making the landmark a greener place to watch a film.

While not the very first theater to be solar powered (hello, Palm Theatere), it is the first major motion multiplex cinema to slap on some PVs for renewable power. The rooftop system is made up of 42 solar modules, and utilized state rebates and federal tax credits to help speed up the pay-back period to just five years.

The system is expected to save over $600,000 in energy costs over its 30-year lifetime. Not too bad! And considering the theater has been around since 1952, it is likely itâll be around to see that savings.

Via Renewable Energy World

Mitsubishi improves e-cycling process

Jaymi Heimbuch — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:39:09 PDT

Mitsubishi is working to make recycling e-waste more efficient through a new technology announced last week.

Typically, e-waste recycling means separating out plastics from electronic components, and the various types of plastic also need to be sorted, and the resins need to be removed from the shards of waste, all of which becomes a fairly complex process. Mitsubishiâs process, the details of which are still under wraps, will simplify removal of polystyrene, polypropylene, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene resins (say that three times fastâ¦) and the whole process becomes much easier, with Mitsubishi claiming the process has a 99% purity rate of recovered plastics.

The revamped process will be performed at a new recycling plant just outside of Tokyo that the company will build starting in October of next year. The simplification of any process typically also means energy savings, so weâre eager to hear more details and see for ourselves just how far-reaching the eco-impact of the process is.

Via GoodCleanTech