DOE

The CEO of Beacon Power, a government-backed energy storage company that has filed for bankruptcy protection, said today that the company could still survive.

Bill Capp released a statement (click for PDF) taking issue with comparisons to Solyndra, a solar collector maker that received a $535 million loan guarantee, then abruptly shut down at the end of August, declaring bankruptcy.

Beacon Power, which makes a flywheel storage system for steadying the grid's frequency, on Sunday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Both Solyndra and Beacon Power received loans through the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee program, which immediately … Read more

The bankruptcies of Solyndra and now Beacon Power show that green-technology startups are still struggling to find ways to cross the dreaded "Valley of Death" into mass commercialization.

Flywheel storage company Beacon Power filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday after running out of options to raise money and fund operations. "The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by DOE, and Beacon's recent delisting notice from Nasdaq have together severely restricted Beacon's access to additional investments through the equity markets," CEO William Capp said in bankruptcy papers, according to reports.

There are significant … Read more

Beacon Power, which secured a $43 million federal loan guarantee to install a flywheel grid storage system, has declared bankruptcy in a case that will likely draw more complaints about government loans to small clean-energy companies.

The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company yesterday filed for Chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court because it was unable to raise money through the stock market. Beacon Power has never been profitable and earlier this month received a Nasdaq delisting notice after its stock had been under $1 for more than 30 days.

"The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by … Read more

The Department of Energy has decided to invest $60 million over the next three years to develop and commercialize concentrated solar technology, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday afternoon.

This investment comes out of the U.S. government's SunShot Initiative, a plan to reduce the cost of solar energy in the U.S. by 75 percent in order to make it more cost effective and competitive with other energy sources, according to Chu.

What is interesting about this particular funding is that the DOE seems to have listened to the critics of concentrated solar and gotten very specific about … Read more

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will tap Nvidia chips to power what is expected to be one of the world's fastest supercomputers.

Oak Ridge's Titan supercomputer will eventually pack as many as 18,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) and have the potential to deliver 20 petaflops of peak performance, making it one of the fastest computers in the world.

Last year, Nvidia made a splash when it announced that its chips were powering the Chinese "Tianhe-1A" supercomputer, which, at that time, became the fastest in the world. As of June, the Chinese system was ranked No. 2 in the world … Read more

President Obama said today he does not regret the loan-guarantee Solyndra received, while recently revealed e-mails show early doubts within the White House about the now-famous solar company.

In an interview with ABC News and Yahoo News, Obama said the policy of providing loan guarantees to clean-energy technology companies is sound despite the failure of Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of August. The company received a $535 million loan guarantee and about $1 billion in private capital.

Obama said loan guarantee program is important to developing clean-energy technologies and demonstrating that that U.S. can be an … Read more

The University of Maryland won this year's Solar Decathlon competition by engineering a net zero-energy house and making water conservation central to its form and function.

The Department of Energy announced Saturday that Maryland won the DOE-sponsored university competition to build the most compelling solar-powered house. Each of the 20 team participants is judged on 10 different factors, including architecture, affordability, and market appeal. (See Solar Decathlon coverage from 2009 and 2007.)

In a speech on Saturday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu congratulated student participants, telling them they are aiding the U.S. in a global competition to develop clean-energy … Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy today finalized financing for four utility-scale solar projects, capping a week of intense activity amid heightened political scrutiny on the loan guarantee program.

The solar projects are: Project Amp, for the installation of 752 megawatts' worth of solar power on about 750 commercial rooftops; a partial loan guarantee for the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in California; the 230-megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 Project in California; and the 250-megawatt California Valley Solar Ranch project.

Among the four projects, the Department of Energy will guarantee financing worth more than $4.7 billion. Earlier this week, … Read more

For the last several months, Barnes & Noble had a nice winning streak going. Its $249 Nook Color tablet had been selling very well since its launch last October and its more recently released $139 Nook Touch was considered by many critics, including CNET, the top e-ink reader available--until today, anyway.

Of course, we, like everyone else, were waiting for Amazon's Kindle counterattack, suspecting it had some pretty good stuff up its sleeve. Lo and behold, in many ways it delivered exactly what we were expecting, but what surprised us was how aggressively it priced its new Kindles. … Read more