For wind power to take a firmer hold, a missing ingredient must materialize: data.
Wind Pole Ventures is building a business as an information broker, gathering more accurate wind speed information for sale to wind farm developers. Last month, the Lexington, Mass.-based start-up signed on its first customer, Invenergy, which will use Wind Pole's data service to better predict wind performance.
There's better wind speed data at the top, says Wind Pole Ventures.
(Credit: U.S. Air Force)Wind power has grown rapidly in the U.S. over the past few years, but the output of large-scale farms has not always matched expectations, which means those projects are less profitable than predicted. Varying wind speeds also make managing the reliability of the grid more complicated, as unanticipated dips can cause outages.
Wind Pole has bought the rights to place wind speed measuring devices, called anenometers, on microwave towers. There were 1,200 of the towers put in place for communications during the Cold War, some of which are used as cell phone towers. But they were largely made obsolete by fiber optic links, said Steve Kropper, founder and CEO of Wind Pole.
Gathering data at 100 meters (328 feet)--about the same height of wind turbines' towers--delivers far more accurate information than getting a reading at 10 meters, which is how data is typically gathered now, Kropper said.
"Ten states have more than 3 percent wind power in their state and because it's intermittent, it comes and goes. So wind has the capacity to provide the grid or destabilize it," he said. "Since there is not storage yet, all we can do is have better predictions for when it blows and when it stops."
There are other companies and technologies aimed at getting more accurate wind speed data. Somerville, Mass.-based Second Wind has a solar-powered, land-based device that gathers data via sodar, which is like radar but uses sound waves instead of radio waves.
Kropper said that using "old-fashioned" anenometers allows it to be relatively cheap and attract investors wary of new technologies. Invenergy plans to use data gathered from almost 60 towers in six states in the U.S.
A Humvee made by American General.
(Credit: AM General)Lithium-ion battery manufacturer EnerDel has signed an 18-month, $1.29 million contract with the U.S. Army to design and test hybrid battery options for the Humvee.
Trying to power the iconic fuel-guzzling High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV aka Humvee) with a battery, may seem like trying to put out a fire with a garden hose. But a lithium-ion battery system can deliver a lot of power from a battery quickly, giving a truck like the Humvee the thrust it requires.
EnerDel, a subsidiary of Ener1, will collaborate with the U.S. Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC) on four possible power systems that could be implemented in the XM1124 version of the Humvee.
The company, which specializes in battery cell chemistry as well as the electronics and battery system designs, said it already has two viable options. EnerDel has developed a lithium-tatinate system in conjunction with Argonne National Laboratory that could accommodate the acceleration and hard braking required for such a powerful vehicle like the Humvee. It also has a lithium-manganese system that would give a vehicle extra-long range and allow electronics to be run off the battery for extended periods of time before needing to be recharged.
As part of the 18-month contract, EnerDel will also be involved in testing the systems under "extreme performance simulations." In addition to putting the test vehicles through the usual Humvee paces of wading through water and mountain climbing, there will also be an endurance test.
That will include seeing how a hybrid Humvee fares as a power plant for a field hospital or temporary military post. The requirement makes perfect sense given the ease with which a Humvee can be transported to hard-to-reach areas. One of its key features has always been that it could be dropped in to virtually any terrain by parachute.
A Humvee being parachuted out of a plane.
(Credit: AM General)The hybrid Humvee will also be more stealthy. Anyone who's had a close call with a Prius knows how dangerously silent hybrids can be in total battery mode. The hybrid version of the Humvee will have a powered-down "silent watch" mode that will allow it to run with its diesel generator off, reducing not only its noise, but also its thermal signature to avoid detection.
As always with major military project announcements, the company involved was quick to point out the down-the-road commercial application of its technology.
"In keeping with a long tradition, we also expect that innovations perfected here will have important benefits for the commercial markets," EnerDel President Rick Stanley said in a a statement.
There has already been interest in Raser Technologies' H3E, a plug-in hybrid version of a Hummer-branded SUV called the H3. While not truly a Hummer (the civilian version of the Humvee), the "Hummer-light" descendant has garnered the interest of even the most discerning Hummer enthusiasts.
So if EnerDel's batteries might be good enough to power a Hummvee, why haven't commercial automakers been knocking? They have actually. The company has signed research partnerships of varying commitment levels with Think Global, Fisker Automotive, Volvo, and Nissan. Its parent company, Ener1, is also working with U.S. utilities to develop smart grid storage units.
Micro-crops of algae grown in man-made open-air ponds.
(Credit: PetroAlgae)PetroAlgae has signed a memorandum of understanding to license its proprietary technology for producing and harvesting algae for fuel to Indian Oil, the company announced this week.
The Melbourne, Fla.-based company has developed bioreactors and harvesting methods for converting algae grown in open-pond freshwater farms into biodiesel.
The first phase of its partnership with Indian Oil will involve building a test facility to see whether PetroAlgae's production method is scalable. Once that has proven to be successful, Indian Oil plans to build a commercial production facility that could produce 200,000 tpa (tonnes per annum) of biodiesel. That facility would also produce a protein byproduct from the process that could be sold for use in making animal feedstock.
The Indian Oil-PetroAlgae deal lends further support to the notion that India's ambition is to rival Brazil as the world's largest exporter of biofuel in the coming years. Global biofuel use is expected to double by 2015, according to a recent report by Hart Energy Consulting, and many Big Oil players have been focusing efforts on getting a footing in that arena.
Until recently, most of the Big Oil interest in algae biofuel has been in the form of investments thrown at pilot projects, start-up companies, and research institutions. But the past few months have seen prominent partnerships with more clearly laid-out commercial ambitions.
In July it was announced that Exxon Mobil is investing over $600 million to produce biofuel made from photosynthetic algae in conjunction with the Calif.-based biotech firm Synthetic Genomics (SGI). Martek Bioscience, which initially was selling its fermented algae as a baby food additive, announced in August that it had signed a deal with BP on microbial biodiesel production from algae fermentation.
While algae start-ups seem to have weathered the economic investment drought, as PetroAlgae's own board head John Scott predicted in May, it remains to be seen which method for growing algae will win out.
There is an ongoing debate over whether it's more cost-effective to grow algae by fermentation or photosynthesis. The PetroAlgae deal with Indian Oil puts another mark in the photosynthesis column.
After: The 6th Street Bridge after high pressure sodium streetlights were replaced with LEDs (See end of post for a before photo).
(Credit: City of Los Angeles/Bureau of Street Lighting)Los Angeles is literally basking in a whole new glow.
The city has decided to replace its street lights and bus stop lighting with LEDs. The bus stop lighting will be solar-powered and off the grid.
LA's Bureau of Street Lighting has been actively testing out different types of energy efficient lighting to replace the public lighting that currently includes a combination of incandescent, mercury vapor, metal halide, and high pressure sodium lights.
In 2009, the agency began an LED street lighting energy efficiency program to actively replace its existing 209,000 streetlights. When complete, the city's energy consumption for public lighting should be cut by 40 percent and save 40,500 tons of carbon emissions per year, according to city statistics.
Now the city has decided on which specific lights to go with. Many of the street lamps will be LEDway streetlights from BetaLED. The solar-powered bus lamps are EverGen lights from Carmanah Technologies. Because the bus lights are self-sufficient, they will not need to be tied into the city's electric grid and will allow the city to remain lit even in the event of a blackout.
In a statement released Tuesday, Carmanah said its lights will also give the city more freedom to replace existing lights or introduce lights in new places without having to dig up sidewalks or tie into electricity poles, cutting down on installation costs.
But in addition to making the city more energy efficient, the switch from an abundance of high pressure sodium lights across the city's highways to LEDs is also drastically changing the city's look. Before and after photos provided by the city of the 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River illustrate a clear change in tint from orange to whiter lighting.
Before: The orange glow of high pressure sodium lights on 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River before they were replaced with LEDs.
(Credit: City of Los Angeles/Bureau of Street Lighting)
A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas that was made from harvesting the naturally occurring gas produced from the decomposition of organic trash.
(Credit: The Linde Group)Trash collection giant Waste Management and the Linde Group petroleum engineering firm have partnered to create a plant that makes liquefied natural gas (LNG) from landfill gas, both companies announced this week.
Linde designed and operates the plant which is located close to Waste Management's Altamont Landfill near Livermore, Calif.
"The opening of the world's largest landfill-gas-to-LNG plant right here in California is a milestone and a testament to our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now that the technology has been proven, we look forward to seeing its adoption spread so more vehicles can run on garbage," Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.
Contrary to what might be inferred from Adams' enthusiastic sound bite, the project is not the utopistic dream of incinerating any old trash in a DeLorean for fuel, nor has either company claimed this. What the project does show is an idea that reduces pollution in two ways. The renewable source for fuel is also a naturally occurring gas that would have otherwise released itself into the atmosphere.
Waste Management collects the gas that is produced from the naturally occurring decomposition of organic trash in its Livermore landfill. The Linde plant then purifies and processes that gas into LNG. The LNG is then used to fuel some of Waste Management's fleet for collecting trash and recycling. Those vehicles, of course, having been slightly modified so that they can run on LNG.
While the plant has only produced about 200,000 gallons since it started operating in September, it has the capacity to eventually produce 13,000 gallons a day or 4 million gallons a year. That would be enough to cover the fuel needs of 300 Waste Management vehicles used for garbage and recycling collection, and save about 30,000 tons of emissions per year, according to company statistics.
This is not the municipal collection giant's first foray into trash-to-energy tech. Waste Management has been distributing solar-powered trash compactors and investing in various projects geared at converting waste in usable energy in several different forms.
Appliance manufacturer Whirlpool has received $19.3 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding as part of its Smart Grid Investment Grant program, the company announced Thursday.
Whirlpool, which markets appliances under the brand names Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, and Bauknecht, joins General Electric in what seems to be a quest for designing the most well-behaved appliances.
The Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer is part of the company's 2009 line of eco-efficient laundry appliances. With Department of Energy funds, it plans to have a million smart-grid-compliant dryers ready for sale by 2011.
(Credit: Whirlpool)Similar to GE's smart-appliance ambitions, Whirlpool plans to develop home appliances that can connect and communicate with municipal smart grids. The machines will be able to receive signals from a smart grid, letting it know of off-peak hours, a good time to turn on and run.
Whirlpool, which will get its funding over a two-year period, plans to match the funds in order to have a million smart-grid-compatible dryers available for public purchase by 2011. The smart dryers will be manufactured in the United States, and the company estimates that the dryers could save consumers $20 to $40 per year in energy savings.
In addition to the smart dryers, Whirlpool has pledged that by 2015, it will discontinue making appliances sans the ability to communicate with smart grids. It will no longer make "dumb" appliances at all.
That promise, however, is dependent on a few things happening.
"This commitment is dependent on two important public-private partnerships: the development by the end of 2010 of an open, global standard for transmitting signals to, and receiving signals from, a home appliance; and appropriate policies that reward consumers, manufacturers, and utilities for using and adding these new peak-demand reduction capabilities," Whirlpool said in a statement.
Whirlpool's announcement follows President Obama's release this week of plans to overhaul the country's electrical grid to turn it into a smart-grid system. An estimated $8.1 billion is planned to be spent on 100 smart-grid projects in 49 states. Utilities themselves will kick in $4.7 billion, while the remaining $3.4 billion will come from the U.S. government as stimulus money.
Data on third-quarter venture capital shows that green-technology companies are attracting dollars from both investors and government programs.
Ernst & Young on Thursday said that venture investing in green tech rose 46 percent compared to the prior quarter to total $965 million in 50 deals. Solar, auto, green buildings, and biofuels continue to be fast-growing segments within the overall category, according to the Ernst & Young analysis of data from Dow Jones VentureSource.
The numbers show that companies shipping products are garnering more money and that a mix of investors, including private equity firms and corporations, are increasingly part of the picture. Because energy-related businesses are expensive to scale up, venture capital companies need to invest with large corporations, such as GE and Siemens, or late-stage equity companies.
Money from the federal government stimulus program is starting to be disbursed which is also aiding new green-tech companies. On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced $3.4 billion worth of grants for smart-grid programs. The money is aimed primarily at utilities, but they then contract with smart-grid companies such as meter manufacturers or software providers which do in-home energy management systems.
Another large program is $2.4 billion in grants to promote plug-in electric-vehicle battery manufacturing. New Energy Finance estimates that $9.5 billion in stimulus money has been already spent and that government money will continue to enter the market for two more years.
These programs, including state-level efficiency mandates and ARPA-E research grants, add to the confidence in the overall market, according to Ernst and Young.
Investors and entrepreneurs are also keeping an eye on an energy and climate bill which is now being debated in Congress. One of the key pieces of the bill is a cap and trade system for regulating greenhouse gases. Under this system, large polluters, such as utilities, have a certain number of permits to emit carbon dioxide. To stay under a government-set cap, they can buy and trade these permits.
A survey by law firm Cooley Godward Kronish of green-tech executives found that 80 percent believe that cap and trade would help the U.S. economy. But investors and entrepreneurs are not expecting passage to affect business plans in the short term, according to the survey which was released on Tuesday.
Google PowerMeter software monitors home energy usage in real time and can be accessed from a person's iGoogle home page.
(Credit: Google)U.K. residents will now be able to monitor and regulate their home energy usage from any Web-enabled phone or computer regardless of whether their energy provider uses smart meters.
Google announced two U.K. partnerships this week concerning its PowerMeter software, one of which completely bypasses the need for cooperation from an energy provider.
Since the U.K. electricity and gas supplier First Utility began offering customers free smart meters in September 2008, it has had 30,000 customers take them up on the offer. Now, as a result of a Google partnership announced Tuesday, First Utility smart meter customers will have the option of allowing their info to be relayed to Google's PowerMeter so their smart meter data and control can be Web-accessible. The service will become available to Midlands customers in early November 2009, and eventually extend it to the entire U.K.
Google also announced Wednesday that its PowerMeter software will be compatible with AlertMe, a U.K. self-install energy monitoring system that works regardless of a resident's energy provider or the type of meter installed in the home.
Unlike smart meters, the AlertMe system does not communicate with an electricity utility's smart grid to advise on low-peak usage hours. It consists of a meter reader that clips on to a home's existing electric meter, smart plug adapters for appliances, and a wireless hub that plugs into a home's broadband connection. The hub wirelessly communicates between the meter reader, smart plugs, and AlertMe service.
AlertMe's smart plug, meter reader, and wireless hub.
(Credit: AlertMe)The device's non-evasive nature makes it an option for renters as well as homeowners. And AlertMe is clearly attempting to target that renter market by pointing out in its quirky infomercials (see video below) that its device is unobtrusive. Unlike smart meters, it does require the usual landlord permission to be installed.
The kits costs 69 British pounds ($113) plus a required 12-month contract for its 2.99 pounds-per-month ($4.90) communication service, which requires that the home have broadband access. The total cost, including one free month of service, comes to 101.89 pounds ($167.55).
On Wednesday, the company also announced the start of its trial with British Gas on an AlertMe kit for monitoring and controlling heating from gas that will tie into the gas utility's smart meters. Since AlertMe monitors are now compatible with Google's PowerMeter, the software will be available to British Gas customers who join that smart meter program.
The Google PowerMeter software that ties in to First Utility, AlertMe, and (by default) the British Gas trial program, is currently free. It makes real-time usage data collected from the companies available by cell phone or computer. The data can then be charted in hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly segments for analysis, allowing users to basically conduct their own personal green-living and energy-usage experiments.
A person could test if shutting off their TV and its electronic accouterments for one week, as opposed to leaving them in standby mode, really makes a dent in their home's overall energy consumption. AlertMe subscribers could also use the PowerMeter software to remotely turn specific appliances on or off.
Both AlertMe and First Utility have said they've found their consumers really do tend to adjust their usage habits to save energy and money, once they come face to face with their own usage data.
"At the end of the day, if you can't measure and view your energy use, it's very difficult to make savings," First Utility's CEO Mark Daeche said in a statement.
Skyline's high gain solar arrays installed at a San Jose, Calif., pilot project.
(Credit: Skyline Solar)Solar array manufacturing start-up Skyline Solar announced Thursday it has made a deal with auto-parts manufacturer Cosmo International to build its frames, racks, and reflectors.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cosmo, a unit of Magna International that includes 37 manufacturing plants, is known for making auto body parts and chassis for the automotive industry. Its fabrications include the door frame for the Mercedes M-Class, the tailgate for the Dodge Dakota, the hood of the BMW X3, and an "advanced high strength steel bumper assembly" for the Volkswagen Passat.
While the announcement is a "rust belt to green belt" example of how the U.S. can turn around its failing manufacturing economy with a refocus on green technology, the deal is not necessarily a bellwether.
Skyline Solar is uniquely suited to a partnership with a company that employs skilled sheet metal workers. In addition to the frames and mounting systems, its solar arrays are, in fact, made of bent sheet metal used to reflect sunlight on to a silicon collector containing monocrystalline silicon cells.
The solar start-up, based in Mountain View, Calif., which in addition to private funding has received $3 million in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy, purposely designed its solar systems to be auto-manufacturing friendly.
Skyline Solar announced in May 2009 that, in addition to reducing the amount of silicon needed for a solar system, it had found a way to use pre-existing auto manufacturing sources as a way to cut down on solar manufacturing costs.
Solar incentives seem to be working to both increase the number of solar installations in the U.S. and bring down the initial cost, according to a report released Wednesday by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
"Findings...show that, after a three-year plateau, costs decreased by 3.6 percent from 2007 to 2008, marking a pivotal year for the American solar industry," said the report (PDF).
Broken down into real 2008 dollars, the report estimated that the actual cost of installing photovoltaic solar systems--excluding tax credits or financial incentives--was $10.80 per watt in 1998 versus $7.50 per watt in 2008.
That initial cost to the installer dropped significantly once incentives and tax credits were factored in.
Last year, the average cost of installation was $2.80 per watt for residential photovoltaic, when incentives and tax credits are counted, and $4.00 per watt for commercial.
The report attributed rising fuel prices since 1998 and government incentives for alternative energy to the solar market boom. There has been a significant increase in photovoltaic installations in the U.S. since 2007. Of the 566 megawatts of solar added to the U.S. grid since 1998, an estimated 293 megawatts of photovoltaic were added in 2008 alone. That recent uptick was attributed in part to "more lucrative" federal investment tax credits adopted for commercial photovoltaic systems in 2006.
If that figure of 566 megawatts seems low given the plethora of solar installation announcements from private and public organizations over the past few years, keep in mind these figures are for grid-connected systems only.
The report data evaluated the cost outlay for 52,000 residential and commercial installations, about 71 percent of all the grid-connected photovoltaic systems that were installed in the U.S. between 1998 and 2009. The report data did not include cost outlay for those residential or commercial systems operating off the grid.
But the report did include outside data for comparison of markets.
It showed that the recent growing popularity of solar is not just a U.S. phenomenon. About 5,948 megawatts of photovoltaic were installed globally in 2008 compared to 2,826 megawatts in 2007. Spain was the largest photovoltaic market in terms of installation in 2008, followed by Germany and then the U.S., according to the report.
Undoubtedly, the global installation figure will increase even more dramatically in the coming years. China alone has announced plans for large-scale photovoltaic installations ranging from 500 megawatts in Baotou, Inner Mongolia to 2,000 megawatts in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. In the U.S., First Solar has been given rights to develop a 550-megawatt plant in California.
