El Paso Solar Energy Association - EPSEA

What’s more beneficial to our country and environment — a rapid deployment of renewable technologies through specially crafted policies and incentives or letting market 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 a wrinkle in the incentive program.

Historical examples support both sides. Railroads criss-crossed the country in the 19th Century in part because of sweetheart land grants from states and the federal government. The U.S. freeway system, created for national security, lead to a population boom and new cities in the Southwest. The Internet? It grew out of 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.

So think of it as solar meets processed meat meets reading glasses. 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:

Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins top the list. Why? One, as investors in Ausra, they 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 (nth Power, 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.

***

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.

Thank heaven for the little things.

The European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, also known as PV Sec, is underway this week in Valencia, Spain, and some of the early buzz is around the materials and components that can make slight differences in efficiency or cost.

"There is a lot being spent on incremental efficiency improvements," said Alain Harrus, a partner at Crosslink Capital who is in Spain at the moment.

Honeywell, for instance, today announced a new series of dielectrics and dopants for crystalline silicon solar panels. These various materials can accelerate manufacturing, slow down degradation and/or boost efficiency. It all depends on what you add to the recipe. Meanwhile, 3M announced it will double the manufacturing capacity for its Scotchshield back sheets for modules in 2011. The material eliminates the need for solvents in that part of the manufacturing process. Over the past year, Dow Chemical has promoted silicone as an encapsulant for silicon modules.

Expect this trend, which started last year, to continue. The relentless price declines in silicon have made investors and potential customers skittish about alternative types of cells and modules. The chemical giants, meanwhile, want to increase their market share in solar. You also have small companies like Innovalight that have largely switched from trying to produce solar cells on their own to selling materials and licensing intellectual property to low-cost solar makers that don't necessarily have state-of-the-art research groups. Thus, if you want to form a solar startup in the near future, think solar chemistry.

"The mood is a lot better than last year," Harrus adds. "Silicon is going well and amorphous is in the rear view mirror...Pricing for silicon is around $50, $55, $60 a kilogram."

The looming question is what kind of cap Germany might place on its solar demand in 2011.

Other news from Valencia:

--SoloPower announced UL certification for its flexible CIGS module. (Crosslink invested in SoloPower.) The announcement follows a host of announcements from Miasole, AQT Solar and Global Solar regarding commercial production of CIGS. Efficiencies range from 10 percent and above, which means greater efficiencies than amorphous silicon and cadmium telluride can offer.

Sulfurcell, for instance, announced a 10.7-percent-efficient module at the show. The company also said it would start to make high-performance copper indium gallium selenide solar cells, the most common type of CIGS cells, along with its copper indium gallium sulfur cells in 2011. Maybe  the commercial onslaught of CIGS is finally upon us.

I was in a meeting discussing the smart grid market with a few partners and associates at Foundation Capital just under a year ago. In no uncertain terms, they laid out their opinion that the door was closed to any new entrants in the smart grid AMI networking space, that Silver Spring had it "sewn up." Granted, it was a bullish and self-serving opinion, given their backing of Silver Spring Networks, the player that everyone seems to be chasing. Nevertheless, and with all due respect to Foundation and Silver Spring, I disagreed. This market is still early days, even a year later.

Fast forward nearly a year to June of 2010: Arch Rock announced their PhyNet-Grid offering, evolving the company from its founding roots in sensor-based building automation networks to that of a full-fledged competitor in the midst of the most active smart grid market sector: AMI networking. 'Full-fledged' may be an overstatement, as the project consisted largely of PowerPoint slides and beta products at that point, but everything else seemed pretty solid: the product architecture, the positioning, the go-to-market strategy, the existing wireless networking technology and expertise, and a CEO with a long history in complex networking systems (not to mention a long history with Cisco). All the while, Silver Spring, barley flinching, was too busy connecting real meters in real distribution networks and most likely responding to real RFPs in North America and abroad. Cisco's acquisition of Arch Rock is debatably a very good thing for Silver Spring, as it essentially further validates the market opportunity and likely drives Silver Spring's valuation even higher.

Last week, Cisco, with its impressive smart grid marketing messages but its until-now-rather-nebulous smart grid product offerings, made two significant announcements.

1. On Wednesday, they inked a deal with Itron, a leading smart meter manufacturer with deep utility roots.
2. On Thursday, they announced the acquisition of little Arch Rock for an undisclosed sum.

I'm not privy to the details of the transaction, but if I had to venture a guess, I would say that Arch Rock went for somewhere between $80 million and $130 million. Whatever the number was, it was likely much smaller than the price tag Silver Spring is placing on itself as they prep to file their IPO in the not-too-distant future. And if anyone thinks that Cisco hasn't taken a serious run or two at Silver Spring over the past year, I'd say they are seriously mistaken. In the end, it was probably a numbers game or egos or any one of the many other things that lead to deals never getting done that just didn't add up. Either way, I'm rooting for Silver Spring to knock it out of the park if and when they reach an IPO. It will be a positive for the entire industry and a reward for a company that delivered the right product to the market at the right time, one of the hardest things for a startup in any industry to do.

We've got to start giving all of these companies a break for a missing feature here or there or a bug in Bakersfield (or a non-bug in Bakersfield, for that matter). These are extremely complex systems with a large number of variables relating to network topology, physical geography, evolving standards and protocols, and a regulatory environment that isn't necessarily a catalyst for innovation. The good news for everyone in the market is that it's off the ground and is now working in real utility distribution networks around the world. And it's only going to grow.

I digress. Let's get back to Itron for a minute here. What a boring, interesting company they are. Is that an oxymoron? Not really. Itron hails from that well-known, high-tech hub of Spokane, Washington (I can knock it; I lived there for two years in the late '90s, working for a LAN networking startup), but they make electric and gas meters, and that's kind of boring. With that said, they're clearly a market leader in the field, with ties to some of the largest utility companies around the globe, and these utilities are in the midst of a major transition from legacy analog meters to smart digital meters. Now that's interesting.

Itron's problem to date is that they aren't a networking company and though they have some in-house networking technology, it's not living up to the next-generation products being offered by newer companies like Silver Spring and others.

Enter Cisco.

Itron needs Cisco's networking expertise and brand. Cisco needs Itron's deep utility relationships and installed base of meters. Oh, and they also need an AMI networking product.

Enter Arch Rock.

The last piece of the puzzle is that Arch Rock's go-to-market strategy from the time they released their platform in June was not to sell direct to utilities, but rather to partner with entrenched meter manufacturers, providing next-gen networking capabilities. At the time they launched PhyNet-Grid, they also had at least one major meter manufacturer in hand as a partner. They weren't saying who it was. I guess we all know now that it was Itron. There's nothing about last week's announcements from Cisco, Itron and Arch Rock that doesn't make sense. They all need one another and they all complement each other.

Are the big brand names, existing utility contracts, big pre- and post-sales organizations, large customer service organizations and that feeling of safety that comes with it all enough? Well, it can't hurt, but it's too early to tell if it's enough. Companies like Silver Spring, and even Trilliant for that matter, having hit the market earlier with the right feature set for the application is a very strong competitive differentiator. But like I said, it's still early days. Nobody has this market "sewn up."

The bottom line here is that we're entering phase II of the smart grid AMI networking game. Phase II from three perspectives:

1. Competition and consolidation. With last week's industry action, competition has just stepped up a few notches. And we haven't even scratched the surface on the many other players, including Trilliant, SmartSynch, On-Ramp Wireless, Tropos Networks, Cooper Systems (Eka), Grid Net (though they look to be shifting product strategy), Arcadian Networks, Echelon, Sensus, Tantalus Networks, etc. Look for more industry consolidation from the likes of GE, Landis+Gyr, Elster and others.
2. Increased rate of deployment. Given the armchair-quarterback stance of state PUC onlookers asking tougher questions, and given the pitfalls faced by early adopters like PG&E, Oncor, and others, this may even seem counterintuitive. GTM Research, though, predicts the AMI market (networking and meters) growing steadily through at least 2013 when it hits its peak of roughly $3.5 billion in the U.S. alone, trailing off slightly after that through 2015. This number is part of an extensive smart grid market forecast that GTM Research will be publishing in a few weeks.
3. The next wave of applications and feature sets. The market action right now is in AMI, but we expect distribution automation (DA) to be an increasingly important application, potentially delivered by this same set of vendors and others in the space. GTM Research has some quantitative market sizing data on DA coming out as part of the forecast as well, but you'll have to wait for the report to get those details. Networked charging infrastructure for EVs is another logical next step. In the long term, why does the industry need the likes of Coulomb Networks (for the network smarts, not the soon-to-be-commoditized charging stations themselves), when utilities are already laying down an intelligent communications network on the grid? Either way, we believe that these vendors, whether it's through current product sets or new products on the roadmap, will be making more noise in both of these areas over the next year.

It's debatable as to whether AMI networking solutions optimized for, well, AMI can also handle the more stringent real-time, low-latency requirements of DA. Perhaps they can for a subset of requirements like monitoring grid assets, but probably not for functions that require latencies on the order of tens of milliseconds (maybe with a lot of additional nodes to significantly decrease hop-count, but that tends to blow cost and resiliency [via loss of path diversity] out of the water). Don't take my word for it; GTM Research surveyed a number of North American smart grid utility executives and asked them if they thought that current AMI networking solutions could adequately meet the requirements of DA, and only one quarter of the respondents said yes.

Source: GTM Research

But those are just details that can be managed through product development and a beefed-up product roadmap in an effort to get a larger piece of the overall smart grid market. The interesting part is that they're going to happen, and that Phase II of this market is now beginning.

A final thought, and one not necessarily related to AMI networking (or even smart grid proper) at all. Cisco, you should take a swing over to Redwood Systems and check them out; we think that should be your next purchase in the greentech space.

Oerlikon Solar remains committed to amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar technology and, to that end, is promising improved efficiency trends and improved cost numbers.

Despite the demise of Applied Materials' SunFab a-Si business, Oerlikon clearly believes there's a future for the oft pilloried a-Si photovoltaic technology -- and the firm continues to make aggressive cost and performance claims.

Today, at the Valencia Spain solar show, Oerlikon Solar is unveiling new technology that looks to drive down cost and increase efficiency in its thin film solar production lines.  The rechristened "ThinFab" includes a number of changes to the equipment and process:

• Improved PECVD, TCO and laser processes improve line yield and product performance
• Thinner cell structures yield reduced degradation and reduced gas consumption
• 10 percent stabilized module efficiency (in the 143 watt module)
• A new 48 volt module replaces a 132 volt design and allows more modules per string and a reduced wiring cost
• Higher performance backsheet reduces manufacturing steps
• Better scribing reduces "dead zones"

According to Oerlikon's Chris O'Brien, these advances will put Oerlikon into a cost leadership position in PV.  

O'Brien made the bold promise of 50 Euro cents per watt ($0.64 per watt) product cost and 10 percent efficiency by the end of this year.

The Swiss-based, Russian-owned industrial group also announced an 11.9 percent stabilized efficiency hero experiment in partnership with Corning, using a new solar glass.  This achievement, according to O'Brien indicates that "there's more room to grow in thin film silicon."

O'Brien also said, "One of the things not yet fully recognized is the performance of thin film in higher energy delivery -- providing a 9 to 11 percent greater energy harvest because of temperature coefficient -- especially in the sunbelt."

The company claimed that their ThinFab reduces the energy payback-time of thin film silicon modules below one year, with the lowest energy consumption for photovoltaic production plants in the industry.  Although First Solar claims an Energy Payback Time (EPBT)  of .8 years   (EPBT includes manufacturing and installation).

There are other players in a-Si -- Sharp is absolutely committed to a-Si, Astroenergy in China is working on a-Si, and we just heard from a stealth startup, also working in a-Si, that is boasting efficiency potentials in the low teens.

Oerlikon continues to make aggressive promises regarding their technology.  Now, Oerlikon has to make good on their performance and cost pledges or their customers and their fabrication equipment business could suffer the same fate as Applied Materials SunFab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you look at the towering turbines and churning blades of a wind farm, you're missing a critical detail: the electronics inside.

National Instruments (NI) calls its real-time sensor networks, wireless sensor networks, and reconfigurable hardware "engineering tools." NI's guiding principle is the engineering maxim that if it can be measured, it can be made more efficient. The company's tools are just beginning to find acceptance as renewable energy developers seek to enhance efficiency and drive down costs by measuring and mastering everything from how straight a turbine is standing to where the best sun exposure in a solar power plant may be.

"NI tools help lower R&D costs for renewable energy systems and get their products on to the market faster," Brian MacCleery, NI's Senior Product Manager for Clean Energy Technology, said. In the wind industry, he said, these tools are being used to measure things as diverse as the shifting of turbine foundations, stresses on turbine blades and wear on gearbox bearings. The result is wind farms with more stability, more reliability and more output.

The crucial nature of such technology to the wind business is growing as the demand for a more competitive price comes from ever-cheaper and more abundant natural gas resources.

Marian Justiss, Xtreme Power's Director of Engineering, explained why her company is incorporating the NI technology into its energy storage systems. "[National Instrument's] cutting-edge hardware and software offer proven reliability and high data rate capabilities," Justiss wrote. "Our engineering staff is also looking forward to fully tapping into the robust functionality."

Increasingly, engineers want to work with the NI tools because of their diverse applications.  MacCleery explained that technologies such as "wireless sensor networks, real-time distributed sensor networks, and FPGA-based reconfigurable I/O hardware ... are relatively new to the wind industry." But the reconfigurable hardware, MacCleery notes, is central to many network applications. It allows, he said, on-site engineers to adjust systems to unique needs. The applications, therefore, may be as unlimited as the purposes that on-site engineers require.

"I'd say the adoption today is a small fraction of what we anticipate for the years ahead," MacCleery observed. "These are powerful new technologies that enable the industry to solve tough problems. They are not 'well-established' technologies."

The potential applications of electronic networks on wind farms are so varied and diverse that it is hard to ennumerate. "Most of the major established wind turbine OEMs are National Instruments customers," MacCleery said.

The networks, both wireless and hardwired, are being put to work on wind (and solar) projects around the world. By gathering and analyzing real-time data, operators can test and validate high-performance components like gears and generators. With multiple sensors in the network, conditions can be monitored.

With embedded sensors and networks, blade performance can be checked and adjusted. Severe weather or seismic events that alter the relationship between foundations and towers can be recognized. When operators have the ability to respond immediately to such conditions, they have the opportunity to increase their projects' performance.

In concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, networks can be used to track and identify the ideal sun exposure and to monitor environmental impacts. For photovoltaic solar, the sensor system is even more potentially valuable. The sensors can be used to measure and guide the panel manufacturing process and can then be used to test and monitor details of panel performance.

Spanish wind developer Iberdrola Renewables has developed a predictive maintenance program for the turbines in its wind projects. Siliken Renewable Energy has increased their solar panels' output with an automated production line test system. Test data on Wavebob Ltd.'s wave energy device has become more detailed by the inclusion of NI reconfigurable hardware.

"This technology is going to be the big tool for advancing the state of the art," Brian MacCleery said. "A lot of business pressures are going to drive the advance of networked sensor technology," he added. For renewable energies, "There are lots of different emerging technologies that are moving out to the field to solve business problems."

There's a solar show in Valencia, Spain (the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference) this week and solar companies have to announce something.  SoloPower, a San Jose, California based CIGS photovoltaics vendor announced "a watershed breakthrough" in a breathless press release for their flexible CIGS PV panels in what they called "a first-ever achievement for the PV solar industry" that makes the firm the "first ever to receive UL Certification for a flexible CIGS module."

SoloPower is targeting the commercial and industrial flat-roof market with applications that favor a lightweight, non-penetrating flexible solar solution.  The SoloPower panel can be rolled up and walked on. 

SoloPower would appear to be going after the same rooftop market as ECD, except they're doing it with a far more efficient product.  SoloPower modules boast a 10.5 percent to 11 percent efficiency (compare that to ECD, which ranks somewhere in the 6.5 percent range) and Tim Harris, the CEO says that he expects CTO Mustafa Pinarbasi to improve upon that number in the coming quarters.  The flexible units can be affixed to the roof with an adhesive or mounted on a lightweight non-penetrating rack.

The company claims that lighter weight makes installation easier and reduces the cost of balance-of-system components.

The 120-employee company occupies a 110,000 square foot building on the southern outskirts of San Jose, Ca.  Capacity for 2011 will be about 85 megawatts and growing as the firm moves from making one-foot-wide, 2000-foot-long rolls to making one-meter-wide, 6000-foot-long rolls on their manufacturing floor.

According to the company in a recent interview, capex is "way under a dollar" and production cost is "competitive," which means it's too early to know -- or too high to mention.

SoloPower is in discussions with the Department of Energy to potentially obtain a loan guarantee under EPACT 2005 Section 1703 to support the construction of an additional multiple-line production facility.

Dr. Rommel Noufi, Principal Scientist of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is quoted as saying, "The certification of SoloPower's flexible CIGS module is an important step toward the realization of lightweight, high-power, flexible solar modules with potential to expand the roof-top solar market and reduce balance of system costs.  It is an important milestone for the industry.  I feel very gratified to see, after a 30-year career in Thin Film CIGS PV at NREL, the technology become mature".

Not mentioned in the press release is that Noufi served as VP of Research at SoloPower from February of 2008 to May of 2009 -- a questionble omission.

SoloPower’s thin-film modules were tested to UL 1703, the standard for safety for PV module manufacturing.

SoloPower's CIGS competitors are also aiming towards UL and IEC approval.

Jean-Noel Poirier of Global Solar Energy said in an email that, "We have started the process and are planning to obtain the UL certification (as well as the IEC and the JEC certifications for Europe and Japan) in December this year."

According to Brian Blackman of Ascent Solar, another flexible CIGS solar vendor, "If you don't have IEC - then UL is just a symbol.  We've submitted our modules for IEC approval.  From our perspective -- it's irrelevant unless you have the IEC - you have to have the 20 year lifetime."

UL is more of a safety test -- making sure people don't get electrocuted when they drive a nail through the PV panel.  It's important but probably less crucial than IEC testing which entails accelerated stress testing under various climate conditions, mechanical impact tests, wind and snow load and power output guarantees.  Flexible CIGS still has to pass that hurdle.

Flexible amorphous silicon panel vendor Unisolar could be in a much more competitive situation when these three vendors come to market with full certification.

(Dallas, Texas – September 7, 2010) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that the City of Houston and the City of Albuquerque will receive grants to advance greenhouse gas reduction activities as part of the Agency’s Climate Showcase Communities initiative

The bus, which the company calls "Solarve," is equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels, LED lamps, and a system for viewing the surroundings of the vehicle.

"This is the world's first public bus that is equipped with solar panels," said a representative of Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, which supplied the PV panels.

The PV panels are mounted on the roof of the bus. They are made with Sanyo's crystalline silicon PV cells (HIT: heterojunction with intrinsic thin-layer, 420W) and amorphous silicon PV cells (Amorton, 378W). Power generated by using those PV cells is used to power the LED lamps inside the bus.

Read the full story on Techon.