coloradogreentech.net

Our first livecast stream of Colorado Green Tech

We’d like to thank Brian and his team from Green Works Video for their tremendous effort in putting this together for the meeting. Our live event stream in high definition looked great (from my latop anyway) and was made available from the homepage on our colorado green tech site. If you’re interested in this service please email Brian at brian@gwvideo.com or visit his website.

Governor’s Energy Office, Renewable Energy Distribution Infrastructure (REDI) Report
Presented by: Adam Cahn, Government Intern

Governor Ritter issued an Executive Order on April 16, 2007, re-creating the Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation (originally created in 1977 to promote energy conservation in Colorado) as the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO). The GEO’s mission is to lead Colorado to a New Energy Economy by advancing energy efficiency and renewable, clean energy resources. The GEO was awarded a grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability to support the REDI Project.  The results of the project were compiled into the REDI report, an analysis of the issues facing Colorado’s electric power sector as it strives to meet the goal of a 20% reduction in CO2 emission by the year 2020 from a 2005 base.

As an introduction on accessibility of renewables on the grid, our green tech host Kris Weisenfeld brought up the Pickens Plan. Considered a pioneer in wind generation in Texas, T. Boone Pickens had plans to build a 4MW wind farm in the Texas Panhandle through the Mesa Energy company. Although he’s purchased wind turbines and started to install them, the complexities of getting the transmission in place is holding the Pickens project back until 2013.  Similarily Colorado REDI report tackles the issues of transmission and technology factors. Utility based power must deal with transmission. Renewables can also increases distances since the optimal renewable sources are not always close to their destination loads.

As a result of Senate Bill 91, the REDI report was created. The report identified 10 Generation Development Areas (GDAs) for renewables in Colorado. From these areas, 8 GDAs support wind with a total of 96GW capacity or 8 times Colorado’s current peak energy usage. The remaining two GDAs support solar and if completely covered with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) would equal 1300 GW.  If only 2% of the land was used for solar it could host 26GW of capacity, more then twice Colorado’s peak usage. The report also includes information from over 450 technical reports produced in cooperation with NREL and the Department of Energy.

Technology is also changing the landscape of alternative energy capabilities on the grid. The SB91 report uses the 2007 NREL wind capacity estimates for wind turbines designed at a 50 m hub height. This is a conservative estimate with new technology for wind becoming available. New estimates from NREL indicate that 80 m hub height increases capacity from 96,000 MW to 300,000 MW or over 3x increase in capacity. Adam also showed some great photos from the Vesta production floor and train-based transportation of these massive wind turbines segments from the factory to their ultimate operational destination.

The REDI report addresses Colorado’s renewable energy portfolio (REP) 2020 goal: 20% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2020 based on 2005 emissions. Today Colorado has made significant progress. Adam showed a chart of CO2 emissions with an increasing curve of where Colorado was going and of how we achieved reduced consumption back to baseline status. This has been achieved with renewable energy and demand side policy to optimize energy usage. Another aspect of energy consumption and limiting CO2 for the 2020 goal is that Colorado is expecting to grow in population from 5.2M today to 6.2 M in 2020. The demand (medium) forecast will go from 60 GWh to 80 GWh. Given these challenges, the strategy for Colorado is to develop significantly more renewable energy and make it available through new transmission lines at higher & more efficient voltages ( 230 KV and 345 KV). Some of the other key recommendations are:

• Increase renewable energy development, including utility scale wind & solar generation
• Increase high-voltage centers from renewable generation sources to high-demand load centers
• Generate natural gas power strategically to supplement naturally variable renewable energy
• Reduce strategical utilization of coal-fire plants and/or retirement of least efficient coal-fired units

If you are interested in more details on the REDI Report go to the Govenor’s Energy Office main site Recharge Colorado where you can view the utube video or read the pdf REDI online report.

Our greentech audience had some interesting questions for Adam. One alternative to utility based is ‘localized generation’, although not a focus for this report the approach is popular in Colorado and requires knowledge and maintenance by the local provider. The REDI report also indicates that although some lines can be upgraded in place to higher voltages, most of the recommendation are pointing to build-out of new transmission capabilities in new areas or beside existing lines. For this build-out, underground buried lines are preferred by many.  However, the cost to do so is over $6M per mile, and 2 to 4 times more expensive then overhead power lines. Colorado is advancing to higher voltage transmission levels and looking to use improved aluminum transmission lines. Worldwide the build-out of capacity is undergoing massive change. Ultra-High Voltage transmission (1000 KV AC +) as prototyped in China,  are looking to improve range beyond the traditional 500 mile limit. At this point in time it looks like Colorado is not as challenged as China in terms of distance but it will be interesting to track advanced in both AC and DC transmission abroad.

SunTrac Solar - Revisited

Presented by: Adam Rentschler, CEO

As Suntrac Solar is in a very dynamic phase of corporate development, we invited them back for an update (see our April 2010 blog on their first presentation) and to allow them to benefit from the “Wisdom of the Crowd” (i.e. you).

SunTrac Solar manufactures the world’s most efficient flat-plate solar thermal panels in Golden, CO. They have shrunk utility-scale parabolic trough technology and put in into a traditional flat-plate collector box. Their core product creates high temperature hot water for commercial and industrial applications.

Overall the discussion included an excellent feedback on new market entry, state by state legislation/rebates/incentives, competitive pricing related to volatility (natural gas/propane) and overall market strategy (risk mitigation versus value creation). Thanks to everyone for participating and offering leads & information to SunTrac. Our local community of experts provided thoughtful information to help develop and support our local green tech companies.

ION Engineering

Presented by:  Buz Brown, CEO

ION Engineering is commercializing proprietary technology for removing CO2 and other contaminants from gas streams found in natural gas, syngas, fossil fuel power plant flue gas and industrial processes.  ION founders include inventors from the University of Colorado and a management team with strong start-up and industry experience.   ION is working with global partners to develop applications for their core technology, based on solvents combining ionic liquids and amines.  The properties of ION’s solvents offer advantages that lead to process improvements with lower capital requirements and reduced operating costs.  Advantages over existing and emerging technologies include improved capture performance, life-cycle cost advantages ranging from 25% to 50%, reduced water and energy use, and a smaller footprint.

ION has found a lower cost solution to address reduction of CO2 and other contaminants in industrial/power plants as compared with current gas-treatment and Carbon capture solutions. Natural gas is cleaner then coal (half the CO2) when used as an energy source but over 40% of natural gas reserves have CO2 and H2S that must be cleaned.   Additionally Carbon capture is currently a very expensive approach to CO2 reduction. Currently the 95% of the industry uses aqueous amine solvents to  ”sweeten” (reducing sour smell) by removing H2S and CO2 from natural gas.

The solvent approach developed by ION engineering uses a ionic liquids and amines that are chemically and thermally stable. Ionic liquids use organic salts that are non-volatile and liquid at room temperature. Conventional technology uses amines to bind to CO2 in an absorber unit and then channels the solvent to a regenerator where the stream is heated and CO2 is captured. The ION approach replaces the water used in the traditional systems with an ionic liquid. The system also saves in the amount of aqueous amine but replaces with a more expensive ionic liquid. Overall the technology has significant benefits, lowering operating and capital cost in the range of 25-50% (an example was shown for a gas processing unit with 15% CO2 having annual savings of 3.6 Mil.).

The addressable market is dependent on regulations and today there are 23 states where green-house gas emissions are restricted. Legistlation and the perception of traditional energy issues (such as the gulf spill) will shape our next energy policy. ION expects to leverage their technology across a spectrum of users. Starting with small volume plants (<100 MMscf or million standard cubic feet per day of gas) by leveraging the strong operating drivers to implement natural gas cleaning. Larger facilities can be retrofitted and have major justification on cost alone to upgrade. Finally, Coal & Gas power plants could use this technology with carbon capture to reduce their equipment footprint and operating cost.

GenGreen LLC – Sustainable Living Made Local & launch of BigGreenDeal.com

Presented by: Charisse McAuliffe,  Founder & CEO

GenGreen LLC was founded in Fort Collins, CO three years ago by Charisse McAuliffe with the intention to help make it easier for people to find the resources they need to live a sustainable, locally focused life. Today, GenGreenLife.com is the largest directory of verified green businesses and organization in North America with over 70,000 listings. GenGreen is also the creator of one of the most popular green mobile applications called “Find Green”, available on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry platforms. GenGreen just launched their newest product, BigGreenDeal.com which is where GenGreen certified members offer exceptional discounts on products and services in a ‘deal of the day’ type transaction. GenGreen will soon be rolling out BigGreenDeal.com on a local level starting in June.

To-date GenGreen has grown impressively since they presented at the inaugural Colorado Green Tech meetup. They have over 70,000 listing in 25+ categories ranging from Green Events to Travel/Eco-tourism to Babies/Kids, Health&Wellness, Carbon Offsetting and Food/Dining. Their “Find Green” application along with the traditional web site tools help users find their product with confidence that they are certified green. GenGreen has had great success with their current iPhone application but also have a future application on the android phone that is close to be released. The web and mobile channels not only find your desired green products but also help find services that are close to you, such as the closest organic restaurant or closest recycling plant.

Their latest venture is called the BigGreenDeal. This new web offering allows for service /product provider to offer discounts to the GenGreenLife audience. An example of a product show in the presentation was a belt made from recycled tires. The offer made to consumers is 51% discount with an expiry time remaining. This product is GenGreen Approved and has fully supported information as part of its certification. As BigGreenDeal uses a similar model to middlemen like ebay or amazon, they take a cut of all transactions. Their current plans is to launch into 50 local markets and be the dominate player in green product search, sales and discounting.

Kris hosting the meeting

Wolfe Law Building auditorium

SunTrac Solar
Presented by: Adam Rentschler, CEO

SunTrac Solar manufactures the world’s most efficient flat-plate solar thermal panels in Golden, CO. A major innovation, they have shrunk utility-scale parabolic trough technology and placed it into a traditional flat-plate collector box. They address a niche segment for  solar thermal products: high temperature hot water for commercial and industrial applications. In their top three states, they deliver a return on investment to building owners and businesses measured in months, not years. The CO2 payback is roughly six months on a system with a 30 year lifetime.

Solar thermal technology works by using the sun to heat either water or a solar fluid (e.g. glycol-based) in black copper tubes which are then channeled to a home’s water heater where the heat is transfered. A pump/controller unit is used to circulate the cooler water from the heat exchanger system to the collector. Using photos sensors, they system tracks the sun and adjust the mirrors for maximum capture. The tracks follow the sun from east to west every day. The commercial version uses 6 parabolic troughs per collector box.

A solar thermal system supplements a gas or electric based heating system at an average annual rate between 60-80%.  The primary competitors for SunTrac product technology are evacuated tubes and flat panel solar collectors. For high-temperature water the SunTrac provided diagram illustrates that the cost advantage of a concentrator system with the lowest dollar cost/BTU of energy created. Another comparative factor is how water-heating technology perform under the desired end-temperature range. Between 36F and 250F, operational efficiencies decline for all three solutions (with SunTrac at 60%@90F and 35%@250F) but as illustrated the  SunTrac efficiency rating tops it’s competitors.

The competitive landscape shows both propane/nat gas./electricity based heating are good markets to enter for both small business and residential for SunTrac. Cost of legacy fuel costs and state-level incentives (Investment Tax Credit) determine the attractiveness of the market for solar thermal. In locations like Colorado, natural gas is abundant and cheap making solar-thermal less attractive.

Posit Partners – What is Your Story? (The Business Value of Strategic Messaging)
Presented by: Carlton Bonilla, Business Development

In support of The Colorado Green Tech Meetup’s mission to fast track early stage Green Techcompanies we are kicking off a new series that looks at the non-technology aspects of a successful cleantech venture. This week we heard from Carlton Bonilla, a partner at a cleantech-focused marketing consulting firm, who will talked about why and how a startup should think about its position in the marketplace and the value of a strategic brand message for technology-driven startups.

One of the conundrums of technology companies is when to build their company story, before or after an initial round of funding. The value of creating this story is significant since a story is the precursor to funding. Posit Partners took on this journey of the importance of a strategy (versus tactics) and substance (versus just style).

As a cleantech company, the communicating your  product’s often complex technology and how the company is positioned in the market is very relevant. Investors need to understand your strategy to grow and rate your ability to communicate to your market (beyond the VC pitch) . A metaphor of an iceberg was used showing that tactics are the exposed elements and underlying (underwater) portion of the iceberg is the strategy. So to sell a story, the company strategy should be fundamentally developed to a level where investor/customer/partners can understand it (e.g. how is the company going to make money?  etc.)

A formula to building a companies brand was introduced. Brand equals identity and position. A companies position is where the substance comes in. A Position (substance) is created through:

1. Tagline
2. Positioning Strategy
3. Competitive brand Audit
4. Key Messaging
5. Pitch Presentation
6. Thought Leadership

The identity (style) of your company is based on the style of how this information is submitted to your audience:

1. Logo
2. Look and Feel
3. Web site
4. Brochure
5. Trade show booth
6. Company schwag

For companies a key takeaway from the presentation was about communication of brand. Strategic storytelling needs to communicate a rational argument with an emotional component that makes your company memorable. Every company needs a way to bridge the chasm (from an R&D startup to an operational company) using a technology translator like Posit. Communicating their value, Posit did a good job of communicating a strategy and how the facilitate/help with a cleantech technology translation process. They left us with the following key points and quote from Sun Tzu:

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

1. Build your strategy first
2. Your substance is more important then style
3. Start your branding journey before your reach our for funding
4. The story of your companies value & intentions is important
5. Look to getting a competent branding company

Greenspark Fuel Systems – On-site Waste Vegetable Oil Fuel Production Systems
Presented by: Mike Lakritz, Founder

Greenspark Fuel System produces the FuelBox fueling system, a self contained, weatherproof vegetable oil fuel production and pumping station. The FuelBox system eliminates the traditional collection/distribution model for producing biofuels from waste vegetable oil. It helps restaurants, hotels, resorts, hospitals, universities and any business using vegetable oil to efficiently and easily produce waste vegetable oil fuel for their own use on-site.

The FuelBox enables vertical integration so the entity becomes the feedstock supplier, fuel producer and end user. Greenspark Fuel Systems is working with Colorado ski resorts, local businesses, the federal government and state and local municipalities and Universities to implement FuelBox systems and empower these groups to increase profits and reduce fuel costs while decreasing their environmental impact.

FuelBox is the flagship product for Greenspark which was formed as a company in 2008. Their market entry is to solve one of the key problems in the Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) industry, make it clean, convenient to dispose of waste and turn it into a profit center versus a cost center. In most cases waste vegetable oil today is not processed on-site and can be utilized for range of applications ranging from pet food fat supplement to dust inhibitor to biofuel feedstock.  Fuel box provides a vertically integrated solution that eliminates the mess and the need for distribution and provides a fuel that can be used directly for fuel.

The technology solution uses a progressive filtering of vegetable  through centrifuge technology. The output fuel is not bio-diesel but an alternative high-quality fuel called VO-100. The filtering process brings oil within the tolerance of a diesel-filter range of 1/10 micron. The viscosity of this fuel requires heat to change the viscosity for the appropriate operational temperature and can not  be used in regular diesel tanks. VO fuel can also be used in residential oil heaters and also to generate electricity through the Vegawatt system that converts oil to electricity with little green house effect (670g of CO2 per Kw of electricity).

An ideal target customer is one that has an waste vegetable oil feedstock and a vehicle fleet. Restaurants, hotels, universities, ski resorts have delivery fleets and fit this criteria. Currently Greenspark has a pilot project ongoing with Copper Mountain resort. This pilot has produced between 8000-10000 gallons of fuel per season. The environmental saving is significant compared to a normal fleet. The fuel removes all SO2, 10-30% of NO2 and 50-90% of all diesel particulates. Alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) conversions and fuel tax credits ($1.25/gal produced and $0.50/gal ) provide a significant savings to the operator of this system along with the cost saving offset of not purchasing fuel.

GreenSpark is currently proceeding with a number of strategic partnerships. With an existing proven product, the next steps are focused on marketing exposure, partnerships and sales growth in targeted markets.

Following the presentation a number of thoughtful questions were raised as captured here. GreenSpark can aid in vehicle conversion (to add a new tank for vegetable oil). The fuel production unit has a minor waste stream, organic sludge in low quantities that will need to disposed of. Vegetable oil based fuel will achieve the same mile per gallon rating as diesel. The fuel will reduce wear and tear through its high-viscosity (200x when heated compared to diesel) and highly filtered nature that will reduce fuel filter replacement. As an alternative WVO reduces emissions compared with diesel which requires sulphur to achieve its viscosity rating. The unit also requires a heating system (e.g. 1Kw @20A) they can cost around $15-20/month.

GoSmart Electric Car Charger Station and SAE J1772 Plug

H2 Energy Inc. – Hydrogen by Nature™
Presented by Richard Franks
rfranks@h2energyinc.com

H₂ Energy is building the first known commercial “biomass to Ultra High Purity (UHP) hydrogen gas” production plants utilizing a patented, proprietary pyrolysis process that converts localized and bio-regional biomass, such as switchgrass, wood wastes and beetle-kill pine, to 99.999% pure hydrogen gas.  This process is unique in that it reduces waste and adds no net CO₂ to the environment, making the process carbon neutral, while producing highly profitable and in-demand pure hydrogen gas that’s competitively priced against hydrogen produced from fossil fuel dependent natural gas.

The latest project in Knoxville, Tennessee will provide Ultra High Purity Hydrogen from biomass and is forecasted to supply all the hydrogen needs for the city. The production facility size is considered medium size for H2 planned factories. The cost of the product is $20-40/ KG based on the regional feedstock costs. The second, phase 2 plant will be 10x as large somewhere in the Midwest and plans to bring down the production cost to $3/kg. The Knoxville plant will produce 192 Kg/day of hydrogen or 62,400 Kg/ yr . The feedstock cost is projected be $50/ton and will sell hydrogen at $16/Kg. and make $515,000 in EBITA earnings. The second plant expects to make $10 million EBITA and produce 10x more hydrogen and use 30 ton/day of feedstock.

A competitive advantage is their ability to reduce capital cost by providing their own construction, management and legal services to stand-up their own plants. The next phase is to partner with some of the larger hydrogen supplier companies such as Airgas & Air Products and sell product to the consumer through their existing channels,  bottling and liquefying facilities.

The pejorative term “shipping straw” raising in the meeting talked the issue of light feedstock (such as switchgrass) versus heavier beetle-killed wood, creating more carbon footprint and raising cost of production. H2 addressed this by planning to co-locate their plants near the feedstock source and in Tennessee an initial partner Genera provides this local feedstock. Labor is the highest driver for plant operations and the requirement of 2 people to be on-site all the time. As for feedstock supply ,  for planned plant locations such as Tulsa, Oklahoma there are cellulosic sources such as switchgrass and wood  available. Switchgrass was lauded for its properties as a carbon sink and its regenerative properties. The root system is over 3 feet deep and pulls in significant carbon over its lifetime. Genera currently mills down switchgrass to a powder for shipping and is looking for clients to purchase it. Another feedstock available is cotton-gin waste which has low transport costs.

The output products are bio-char (about 5% of the input) and waste gas can be utilized to produce electricity. Also there is hydrogen flue gas and water vapor by-products. For products such as beetle-kill wood, the removal cost is the primary deterrent, but in Kremmling, Colorado roads/infrastructure have been built to access the beetle-kill pine, so it has become a cost-effective feedstock for the processing plants in that area.

Go-Smart Technologies Inc. – Plug-in to your future
Presented by Brian Smith CEO/Cofounder
brian.smith@gosmarttechnologies.com

GoSmart Technologies, Inc, located in Denver, Colorado, has developed a plug-in vehicle charging station that allows owners and businesses to promote the use of plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles. With accessible charging, plug-in vehicle owners can charge in confidence during any part of their daily routine. This provides convenience and security, by insuring a full charge at anytime they choose. GoSmart Technologies’ products and applications contribute to the reduction of the carbon footprint we all leave. To do this, many automobile manufacturers are designing vehicles that produce little to no emissions. GoSmart Technologies supports this world initiative by providing the infrastructure that allows consumers to make better decisions, contributing to an improved sustainability throughout the world.

On the horizon for the car industry are a number of plug-in electric vehicles that will be offered in 2011-2012. GoSmart has developed the charging station that will meet the need of distributed smart charging throughout the country. Of the most exciting vehicles is the Nissan Leaf, partially due to its retail cost of 25K (after tax savings). Also the GM Volt is expected to be release along with Ford Focus/Escape to compete in this segment. Polling suggests over half of respondents are interested in plug-in vehicles. The addressable market is over 300 mil. vehicles in the U.S. and if 22% of owners purchased an electric vehicle that would translate to 66 mil. new plug-in vehicles in the public/private market.

With at-home charging of electric vehicles, convenience is the driving factor of the GoSmart product that allows customers to get a quick charge in various accessible locations. The first product, RF-30, is a non-fee charging station for personal garages, vehicle fleets or parking garages that build the electric charge into fee structure. This product supports level-2 charging at 220V for 2-4 hours versus 8-10 hr. at 120V. City of Denver is working with GoSmart on these charges to support mid-day charging for vehicles.

The latest product in development involves more sophisticated tracking through back-end software and offers more control and information to the charging station operator. The product supports various analytical capabilities – managing when a vehicle can be charged, how it is charged, types of vehicles being charged, recording the amounts to track petroleum reduction and other analytics. To support a standardized electric charge & communication over power lines, the electric plug is based on the SAE J1772 standard supported by the major car manufacturers (Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, etc.). With an advanced charging station Vehicle 2 Grid is also available with the local power grids to support reverse charging and monitoring.

As part of a strategy for public adoption of this technology, electric charging has the incentive of being added to LEED based homes and garnering points for builders to include this as a standard for construction. KB Home is one of the forward-thinking builders that are offering this option today in their built to order homes. Partnerships include the Project Get Ready by the Rocky Mountain Institute which helps promote and advocate cities, builders, and individuals to plan for plug-in electric vehicles, and GridPoint which develops a smart grid platform.  GoSmart Technologies, Inc is a member of the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association and is active on the transportation board. GoSmart is part of the DoE Clean Cities initiative and is currently promoting charging station technology in the states of New Jersey and Hawaii.

Competitors already exist in the market and have event deployed charging stations in our own backyard in Lone Tree at the Element hotel.  The charging station is not seeing much uptake due to the lack of plugin vehicles. GoSmart has a number of competitive advantages. They offer 3 separate products that can serve home, fleets,  and both private/retail users. They also offer advanced software to support improved control over when charging is utilized, avoiding higher cost peak-time rates by allowing customers to set charging policies. A touch-screen interface for the public unit allows customers more control by setting how they want to charge, what rate they want they want to pay and other features. Another competitive approach taken is allowing any customer to become a member of their group (free of charge versus other vendors that charge).  Members have the ability to track their emission reduction points (ERP) and gain benefits. The products are half the cost of their competitors and offer personalized branding capabilities to companies such as WalMart that be interested in promoting their green offerings.

The RF-30  ranges in price around $1500-3000, depending on the different configurations utilized. This could include metering, software enhancements and support.  Currently they have a number of pre-orders on the books and there is increasing demand. Even with standards, Colorado has not necessarily adopted the JPlug standard yet and GoSmart has had to make adapters to make their system work. The SAE plug is also still in the works (as of this writing) to be UL listed (certified) for usage, and the products need this certification before they can be released on the market.

Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) - The World’s Most Effective Renewable Energy Policy
Presented by Lois Barber
lois@earthaction.org

FITs are the most widespread and effective legislation for the promotion of renewables. Sixty countries, 6 U.S. states, 2 cities and 1 Canadian province are already benefiting from FIT policies. We learned the benefits of this simple and effective policy and heard about plans to introduce it here in Colorado from Lois Barber. Lois is the Co-chair of the Alliance for Renewable Energy—ARE which promotes feed-in tariff renewable energy policies throughout North America. She is also the Co-creator and Executive Director of Earth Action, an international network of over 2,500 organizations in 165 countries that have carried out over 80 global environment, development, peace and human rights campaigns.

Lois started the talk with a little background on Feed-In-Tariffs, which seems to indicate a tax but is actually a rate of payment to the distributed power generators to the grid. The direct translation is from the term used for this in Germany, where the industry has been nurtured. Sources for power vary from  solar, geothermal and small hydro generation on individually small scale operations on home roof-tops and properties. The key to the program is that the local utility must buy the power at a fixed contract rate per KwH for an extended period (usually 20 years). The rate supports a 5% commission to the producers and this cost is spread to customers which translates to very low fee in the range of $1.50/month on a utility bill.

In the united states FITS are starting to get some traction. Vermont has passed a law in 2009 and Gainesville, Florida which was the first city to meet its 4MW target in the first 4 hrs of permit filing enrollment . Gainesville is currently playing 32 cents/kWh which is greater (said to be double) than the current bulk residential rate. For states with Renewable Energy Portfolios (REP), meeting renewable energy targets using a feed in tariff is a serious consideration, and a number of states such as Wisconsin and others are closely watching the success of Vermont and Florida.

Today there are over 50 countries that use FITS arrangement to help stimulate and utilize renewable energy. Of many benefits, decentralized energy provides a more secure and robust way to generate energy. Another benefit is helping homes to generate alternative income. Germany has attributed over 300, 000 jobs to its renewable energy sector and today accounts for 53% of the worlds PV energy production. As a comparison, the U.S. is 25x bigger then Germany, (with German photo-energy similar to that of Seattle) and only has 11% of the total global PV energy production. Additionally FITS countries typically have lower electricity rates which can be illustrated by comparing non-FITS countries to FITS countries (e.g. Japan to Germany or the UK to Italy )

Germany started in 2001 and significant growth in PV energy has resulted in today’s 2500 MW generation output. German tariff systems typically allow a residential setup to take out loans easily (with the fixed 20yr rate of purchasing electricity) and with a payback of 9 years from electricity sold to the utility, the remaining contract time is pure profit.

Run-about cycles in the Law Building

Element One, Inc. –  A new Era in Hydrogen Detection
Presented by William Hoagland, President
whoagland@elem1.com

Element One, Inc., based in Boulder, Colorado, has developed a unique gas sensing technology that makes it possible to produce a wide array of low cost, reliable hydrogen detection products.   Products made possible by this technology are indicating paints and specialty coatings, inks, marking pens, indicating tapes, stretch films, shrink wrap, and low cost RFID smart tags that could be used to create a network of detectors.  Hydrogen use is growing by 10% per year – the market is in the tens of millions and over !00 million world-wide.  With the potential increase in it’s use as a consumer fuel, there’s great reservations about its safety.  Hydrogen is an odorless and highly explosive gas, that’s hard to contain and difficult to detect.

Element One, Inc. has created the only available “smart” coatings for the detection of leaked hydrogen which change color, either reversibly or non-reversibly as desired.  They have applied this technology to a wide range of products:

• smart inks or paints (1.5yr lifespan)
• thin film indicator – can be used for safety decals and labels
• flexible tape – applied to pipes, seals
• shrink-wrap – used for packaging in transport
• RFID sensors – installed at facilities and plants

The non-reversible sensors serve a “single use” function, as the color indicator is a permanent change.  The reversible sensors are multi-use items – the color indicator disappears once it exposed to oxygen.  Even though it’s reversible, they will still need to be replaced every so often, as it’s sensitivity will diminish over time.

Element One has identified 3 main markets for it’s line of products and examples of the industries in each market:
1. Hydrogen Leak Detection

• Energy Systems & Fuel Cells
• Oil & Gas
• Chemical
• Nuclear
• Food Processing
• Space

2. Contaminated Drywall

• Builders
• Inspectors
• Home-owners

3. Bio-Medical Testing

• Hospitals
• Research labs

The availability of these products will reduce concerns over the safe use of hydrogen in the next generation of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in consumer environments where the lack of operating experience has been identified as a significant barrier to their widespread adoption.

This sensing technology has been extended to chlorine, hydrogen sulfide and several other hazardous gases.  Element One Labs is now completing product development and testing to introduce the next generation of low-cost hazardous gas leak detectors to the existing $500+ million gas sensor market and facilitating the transition to hydrogen vehicles.  They are actively looking industry partners in the areas of strategy/finance, testing and manufacturing.

Run About Cycles Inc –  Enhancing the Cycling Experience
Presented by Joshua C. Kerson, Founder
Josh@runaboutcycles.com

RunAbout Cycles has been specializing in green local transportation options since 2004 and is recognized as one of the prime manufacturers of electric powered personal vehicles. They offer quality support for a wide range of electric cycles, including electric tricycles, bicycles and motorcycles. Runabout Cycles is positioned to create an Electric Bicycle distribution network in the marketplace.
There are over 300 electric bicycle companies in the world today and nearly 1 in 7 manufactured bikes is Electric. With the majority of the European tradeshow floors focused on Electric and over 100 million Electric bikes on the roads in China, there’s obvious opportunities to expand this market in the US. The advanced technologies in Electric bikes are creating exceptional value for today’s end user. The US demographic trends are also indicators of the market potential. 70 million people are approaching retirement, and the 50+ age group is looking for ways to resume exercise habits. There are also currently 5,000 closed gate communities where a lighter (and greener) form of transport is ideal.

The benefits of Electric bikes are both financial and medical. Cycling strengthens your heart and lungs without placing unnecessary stress on your joints. It naturally tones the body’s musculature, and remains one of the best cardiovascular exercises that one can do. Plus, with the Electric bike, there’s motor that can provide assistant if it becomes a bit strenuous. Economically it is much cheaper than operating and owning a car. The Electric bike can achieve 1,000m/gal compared to fuel operated alternatives. These Electric bikes also fall into the bike class (1hp and up to 20mph) that does not require registration, inspection, insurance and driver’s license.

An electric bike at RunAbout Cycles starts at $1,200 – $1,500 and can run up to $6-8K for a custom high-end bike in the 100+ mile range. The average price in Europe for an Electric bike is $2,500 or $600-$700 in box box stores. RunAbout Cycles also offers kits to retrofit your current bike as an alternative to purchasing a new unit. They project that the E-bike conversions and accessories will generate an additional 30% in revenue.

The maintenance is also relatively simple – just plug into a standard electric outlet with the supplied adaptor. A full charge takes only four hours to complete. RunAbout Cycles also has trained and qualified technicians to help diagnose and fix any problems.

RunAbout Cycles is investing to build their flagship store and setting up franchise opportunities, and also to establish partnerships in product development.

Electric bikes are enabling more people to enjoy an enhanced cycling experience by providing clean local transportation alternative with an assistive technology.

A2BE Carbon Capture LLC – Industrial Algal Cultivation Technology
Presented by Jim Sears, CTO
www.algaeatwork.com / jimsears@algaeatwork.com

A2BE Carbon Capture is a behind-the-scenes architect and thought leader for the nascent algal biomass industry. Co-founder Jim Sears has been a featured speaker on this topic at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Bipartisan Policy Center, Electric Utilities Consultants Inc. and the Algal Biomass Organization where he also serves as Chairman of the Technical Standards Committee.

Micro-algae are found in lakes, rivers, oceans and even in soil. Algae are masters of photosynthesis and sold powered chemical production, it’s ideal source of bio-fuel. The challenge with traditional Algal cultivation systems is that they are generally built like “Open Raceway Ponds”, which have unsustainable water consumption and CO2 emissions. The key is “re-productizes” CO2 emissions.

A2BE’s core technology is scalable, low-water-consumption closed-photobioreactor algal cultivation technology that will be environmentally permit-able and highly suitable for integration with the newly evolving low-carbon fossil energy industry. Algae cultivation will have an agricultural sized footprint, but it is sustainable both environmentally and in resources. Though still in the R&D stages, A2BE’s “Closed Photobioreactors” system is designed for low water consumption and no CO2 emissions. The energy balance is 4-5 times versus ethanol which is only 1.2 times. The carbon market is marginal versus the end-product benefits.

A2BE’s algae system is also capable of enhancing the net CO2 emission performance of other biofuel processing plants and fossil fuel processes. The O2 generated by the algae system would be used for oxy-fuel combustion to produce a CO2 rich flue gas ready for sequestration. The CO2 from this would be piped to feed the algae cultivation system.

Because algae can replicate quickly, adaptations can arise and lower production. A2BE has addressed this issue by using mixed cultures and inoculation (refresh strains).

With their patent pending technology and additional intellectual property from a select group of collaborating corporations, institutions, and individuals, A2BE is expecting to go from pilot to full scale bioreactor operation within 24 months and their first carbon capture projects within 48 months.

Building Systems Insight – Critical Resource Monitoring and Analytics
Presented by Scott Hendrickson, PhD, CTO and Chris Svarczkopf, JD, VPBD
scotth@buildingsi.com, chriss@buildingsi.com

BuildingSI deliver continuous real-time visibility into the performance of key operational systems for commercial and industrial buildings and operations. Whether your facility is retail or manufacturing, BuildingSI provides minute-by-minute visibility into use of electricity, gas, water and key operating conditions such as temperature, equipment function and more. They can convert data on the use of critical resources such as energy, water, waste water, natural gas and carbon production into actionable strategic business intelligence. BuildingSI delivers the insight to configure systems such as lighting, HVAC, air handling and production processes to operate at peak efficiency for comfort cost savings and productivity.

The Analytics part of the service uses real time access to data on the resource usage, (electricity, gas, water, etc….). It can compare data from various sensors and time periods to look for patterns, correlations, consistencies, variations, etc. The system normalizes data from various sources. Results, updates and alerts can be sent to clients electronically via email, twitter or SMS. Monitoring operational systems can add value by decreasing energy costs, identifying optimal usage schedules and improving other business processes. Ownership of the data is specified in the customer agreement, but when there’s a 3rd party involved, it can make things a bit more complicated.

BuildingSI partners with energy consultants, building consultants, LEED certification consultants and building managers to provide monitoring services for customers, measuring/verifying project results, identifying new opportunities and building long-term relationships.

The hardware, installation and commissioning costs are covered either by the customer or channel partner. BuildingSI charges monthly fees or yearly contracts for their monitoring services. For clients with over $10K monthly in energy costs, they can potentially see savings from between 10-40%. The higher your energy bills, the greater the potential savings with the monitoring system. BuildingSI offers different levels of services, providing incremental customer value. They have a field-proven product with enthusiastic prospects and are targeting a multi-billion $ market that’s growing.

Water Legacy – Conservation through water ReUse
Presented by Michael Vail

A Boulder based company, WaterLegacy has a mission to:

Help every citizen personally conserve water without any reduction in quality of life

Their core product helps homes convert to the usage of greywater instead of freshwater for flushing toilets. To start the discussion, Michael surveyed the meetup group to how many believe we have a looming global water shortage crisis and the response was high.

Starting out with problem definition, Michael laid out some foundational data. Today water resources are being strained through population growth and drought. In the U.S., 36 states by 2012 will face water shortages and that many water resources are at the point of non-replenishment.

So, to start to build a grey water system, classification of domestic water use is in order. The types of water are white (fresh, potable), grey (originally used domestic water from laundry, bathing, dishwashing, etc.) and black water (human waste).

The next step is the reclamation technology to provide grey water to a home’s toilets. In order to address this WaterLegacy product is the only USA designed and built full-home Greywater reuse system. The solution provides filtering/disinfecting and storage of grey water, and claims between 25-60% savings of freshwater.  This solution competes with both German and Canadian systems of similar functionality. To provide continuous operation, the system has a fail-safe, automatic design. The systems are certified and must comply with requirements of potentially 6 different regulatory bodies in the US. construction

The business value relies mainly on consumer preference since the ROI is zero for the system which adds 4,500 to a house. This may change since water today is highly subsidized :

The full cost of supplying water in urban areas in developed countries is about US$1–2 per cubic meter depending on local costs and local water consumption levels. The cost of sanitation (sewerage and wastewater treatment) is another US$1–2 per cubic meter. These costs are somewhat lower in developing countries. Throughout the world, only part of these costs is usually billed to consumers, the remainder being financed through direct or indirect subsidies from local, regional or national governments (see section on tariffs).

An example utility Denver Water, charges for  block 1 water (0-11,000 gallons used) is $1.91 per thousand gallons for inside city/county used water.

WaterLegacy has 20 units running in production and are installed in all three Colorado platinum LEED certified homes. Their product is certified by IAPMO, the international plumbing and mechanical association. Along with growing engagements in the U.S., the WaterLegacy product is competitive through value engineering with only a yearly maintenance compared to other systems requiring monthly maintenance. The opportunity for grey water reclamation systems is presented as 40K homes in 2010 based on 40-50% green home constructions of 90K homes built in Southwest.

Bioharmony – Accelerated growth of biological systems
Presented by Steve Slade

The presentation begins with an introduction of the journey from research to biological growth experimentation to development of systems of improving bio-fuel production. The starting point is with Ortho-Logic, an FDA-approved company, which produced a product that accelerates bone mending through weak-electric fields. This technology is called electric field  ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) which works by applying a specific frequency to enhance calcium production.

The next part of the presentation went on to describe how ICR in 90’s produced research that engineered plant cells efflux through the application of specific frequencies.  This technology controlled the cell membrane’s ability to pass specific ions and molecules more efficiently by acting as a catalyst. Steve indicated this research has been applied to cell cultures, amino acids, and proteins. Research areas examined plant metrics where the efflux effects had positive influences on plant height, width, root width, cell diameter, and leaf length. A major success for ICR was demonstrated in orchid growth, Steve indicated greenhouses usually have to wait a long time for orchids to bloom (this can be 5-7 years). In orchids, the ICR technology stimulated plant growth by creating bigger (he just showed larger plants) and healthier plants. This also was demonstrated for radishes which have seen 20% growth improvement (stalks, leaf size and germination).

Bioharmony then turned their efforts toward another market – improving bio-fuels production. A very attractive area on size alone, the current market for bio-fuels is $100B and growing 10%/year (with government mandates incentivizing growth). Based on initial calculations for corn based ethanol, an ICR process can save 8 cents a gallon. The ICR system provides a number of benefits: reduction of capital investment (reduction of equipment due to improved efficiency), reduction in usage of chemicals and no retrofitting of processes (by utilizing magnetic fields on existing equipment). With the existing patents owned by the company, Bioharmony has no real competitors in this market. The current objective is to work with the 183 biofuel plants in the U.S. that produces 11B gallons/year, the majority being corn-based ethanol. The 2022 goals set by the FDA in the Renewable Fuels Standards Program is to reach 36B gal/year of bio-fuel production for the U.S.

The future for bio-fuels as far as the FDA incentives are concerned is cellulosic ethanol. This fuel currently is expensive (cellulosic ethanol is presently at $2.65/gal), whereas corn-based ethanol is only $1.65/gal. Again the ICR system (tested on proteins and amino acids) provides savings at around 25cents/gal by reducing enzymes and capital costs through accelerating enzymatic hydrolysis. Based on the same process, algae production can be improved and provide more oil. Interestingly, this process can also improve yeast production for brewing and increases the speed of flavor extraction.

MobileIQ – Routing Planning for Small Business
Presented by Chris Sciora

MobileIQ is a local boulder company that helps small businesses, employing vehicle fleets, decrease the miles driven. Another area of service beyond tackling mileage reduction, is to assist businesses that spend extensive hours (3-4 hrs per day) planning routes, performing this task. Chris provided a great example to visualize the dynamic nature of businesses that need to dispatch vehicles to address on the fly. He demonstrated a scenario at 2pm with 4 service vehicles, 42 service calls, 3 missed appointments, 2 emergencies and a 30 mile service zone.

The opportunity presented is large, presently at 900K small, local businesses with 20 million trucks for service and delivery, driving 500 billion miles with a cost $1 trillion. The target of reducing the miles driven by 10% is significant – 50B miles. The environmental impact for the U.S. would be significant, and also provides a large operating cost savings. According to market research, there is a overwhelming conclusion from business owners – around 79% agree that reducing the miles driven would impact their bottom line.

As a response, MobileIQ has developed an application called Headlight, a SaaS web application that allows fleet owners to plan their routes. This product provides time savings in route planning, from 3-4 hrs/day to 10-15m /day. Transparency is a great side benefit, allowing fleet managers visibility, management control and tools to improve performance. As part of their professional services line of business, MobileIQ consults with companies and works to optimize their existing customer routes. With an 11-step plan, a program of “route balancing” is executed that provides a set of standard routes optimized for business objectives.

Results of the product efficacy compared to customer expectations are significant. In most cases, surveyed customers had their expectations exceeded by at least two-fold. For instance, many customers did not believe they can reduce their fleet; however, actual results indicate that an average of 20% of vehicles can be taken off the road. Other results included a reduction of 27% in driving hours and a reduction of fleet miles by 41%.

The current marketing strategy presented was based on direct response marketing, essentially using adworks to draw potential customers searching for the keywords “routing software”. Chris based his rational on a number of industry precepts. One principle is based on Seth Godin marketing work, in essence  your business cannot invisible target potential clients who don’t understand they have the problem that your product solves. So, it’s always better to service an existing market then trying to create one. Another insight was to automate the process of identifying interested prospects and converting them into paying customers. Based on Michael Gerbin’s e-myth philosophy, IQ navigator utilizes Google to automate the process of identifying customers looking for route efficiency for fleets. Chris indicated they were doing well with this strategy, achieving a conversion rate of 18% of clients signing up for their service. Today they are paying $2.40 a click which has improved business with a break-even in 30 days.

Ed Lehrburger, CEO of PureVision speaking on the future of bio-fuel production

PureVision – Enabling Technology for the Cellulosic Biorefining Industry
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Presented by Ed Lehrburger, CEO

PureVision is a technology company, based in Ft. Lupton,  that has developed a patented a solution to make bio-refining of fuels a sustainable and profitable venture. A carbon-neutral biomass fractional technology produces sugars from cellulosic biomass. The resultant product can also be direct energy or fiber to be used as feedstock to other industrial or consumer products. The feedstock to the PureVision process excludes food based products such as corn and focuses on cellulosic based biomass such as wheat straw, corn stalks, trees and energy crops.

Ed started his presentation by providing a clear definition of his technology and use of cellulose. Cellulosic sources range from trees, shrubs, grasses and other fuel crops. The process will not use the seed or the fruits but focus more on the branches, stumps, trees and other materials that are not necessarily as recyclable.

The result of the process is to produce sugars which can be used for many products. In the next hundred years sugars will replace crude oil as a source of energy. It is rapidly becoming the feedstock of the future.

There are many products that can be made with these sugars, including ethanol diesel gasoline, jet fuel and industrial chemicals, consumer products, pharmaceuticals with fibers and sugars from biomass. Today there are number of companies with platforms to make their products from these fibers and sugars but the problem is that there are few technologies to make sugars from abundant bio-mass. Today a common way to do this is the nine day process known as the NREL dilute acid pre-treatment. This pretreatment makes the biomass available for conversion when enzymes are added. The sugars are then used to make bio-fuels/ethanol.

PureVision has a new technology that condenses the dilute acid process from 9 days in batch mode to a 20 min continuous process. Today’s processes involve a number of steps such as stirring, mixing, heat that involve large facilities, energy, capital and incur waste water disposal problems. Fractionation reduces much of the downside of this process, by using water and reagents to quickly extract the product. Examining a new approach we first examine the inputs:  biomass & plant products. Typical feedstocks consist of a combination of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin (A typical biomass breakdown is 40% cellulose (fiber), 25% hemicellulose, 20% lignin, 5% ash, 10% extractives). Essentially much of the cellulose input is pulp, and the PureVision solution mimics the pulping process (removing lignin, hemicellulose) concentrated to an 8 min process in a reactor (versus 2 hours for paper). The cellulose (e.g. corn stalk) is converted to glucose (6 carbon sugar).

The structure of the target feedstock, biomass (e.g. corn stalks) is a combination of cellulose (containing glucose – 6 carbon sugars), and hemicellulose (containing non-glucose 5 carbon sugars). This combination along with lignin has evolved over millions of years to withstand rain/snow/storms. Ultimately though, the structure needs to be broken down to make the end product. Glucose is the primary intermediate product from the fuelstock – the (C6) sugar is the easiest to work with and provides the highest yields for the end product (e.g. fuels). The other product are as follows:

• Xylose sugar syrup from the hemicellulose
• Lignin – cane be used a young coal (high btu fuel) – sold as fuel or for making other industrial products
• black liquor – a biogrowth media for producing yeast
• residue of ash (nutrient rich to go back to the soil)

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The process is very effective, using a countercurrent process (injecting water upstream), it extracts out around 95% of the fiber from the biomass while removing the hemicellulose & lignin. This process avoids overcooking the biomass and thereby losing the fiber recovered. The final stage converts the extracted fiber to glucose

Food versus fuel debate has positioned cellulosic processes as a more viable option to make fuels. Ed referenced the spike in corn-meal prices in Mexico shutting down tortillas plants

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. Also here in the states corn went to over 7 dollars a bushel with increased ethanol production and the Iowa flood coinciding in June 2008. This positive incentive along with the federal support for cellulosic ethanol (up to one dollar a gallon for cellulosic fuel) is driving considerable research into making cellulosic biofuels more sustainable and produce better yields at lower costs. Target markets for PureVision is to follow the trend of converting ethanol plants (in the next 5 years) in places such as the American corn belt and South America (e.g. Brazil) into cellulosic plants. The existing PureVision pilot plant can run 24 hr/day and process a half ton biomass per day. Near-term pilots are expecting to scale up to 20 ton/day and an upcoming commercial plant is expected to process 250 ton/day. The company has done R&D for clients and received 6 grants so far to help develop their unique fractionator process.

Questions from the green tech group started with the expansion and retrofitting of plants in Brazil. Ed considers it one of the biggest markets in the world. Brazilian sugarcane ethanol (considered to be the most successful alternative fuel to date) is processed by squeezing sugar cane. The residue created from this process is burned as bagasse The Black Shield of Falworth ipod which provides heat for the mill’s operations and is also used for cogeneration of electicity to be sold back to the grid. This process is considered to be greenhouse gas neutral since the CO2 released during its burning is the same absorbed by the plant during its growing phase but this could be partially mitigated. The PureVision process has proposed to make 35% more ethanol by using their process and to derive energy from the lignin to replace the direct burning of bagasse.

Another question raised about how much product is generated the 250 ton plant. Ed responded that the plant would generate 60 gal/ dry ton (cellulose) of ethanol fuel and by using the lignin and hemi-cellulose the output raise to 90 gal/ dry ton. Vertical integration is another evolving area for cellulosics. Although today a wood based feedstock could be used with volumes as high at 2000 ton/day, the main focus is on energy crops/ agricultural residues such as switch grass that will provide a more sustainable input to bio-refineries. PureVision has multiple patents on the process and apparatus and have worldwide patents. As of today they have experimented with 6 feedstocks: bagasse, corn stovers, wood, corn cobs, wheat straw, triticale straw. The energy required for cellulosics is generally accepted to be 35% more efficient the corn ethanol production and water usage is significantly reduced with cellulosics (specifically if the biomass has more moisture – typically plant mass is already 50% water).


Texas Instruments – Alternative Energy Initiatives Redacted hd Final Destination the movie
Presented by John Van Scoter, Senior Vice President

Texas Instruments helps customers solve problems and develop new electronics that make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. A global semiconductor company, TI innovates through design, sales and manufacturing operations in more than 30 countries.

As Texas Instruments (TI) is primarily an electronics company, John began with a little background on how the company is applying its current expertise in green electronics. Firstly, TI is a large corporation with 12.5B in fourth quarter revenue 2008 (a 30% drop from 4Q07 ) and R&D spending was around 2B in 2008. Some other notable trivia, a major market segment for TI’s chips is targeted for communication based systems. The device/chip catalog has over 30000 products and many of these product are available for free for entrepreneurs for prototyping. TI is showing leadership in green construction with its latest TI analog 300 mm manufacturing facility in Texas, the first semiconductor facility awarded a gold LEED certification. TI also has a received a silver LEED certificate for their assembly/test facility in the Philippines that will be the first in the country awarded a LEED certification.

The Texas Instrument approach to the green technology sector falls into 4 categories:

1. MakeIt – Renewable(solar, wind, biomass) and Distributed power (including efficiencies in Refinement/Drilling)
2. MoveIt – Real-time monitoring, transmission & distribution, smart meters, 2-way price signaling
3. UseIt – improving motors, lighting (LED), consumption, appliances, power supplies, transportation, HVAC, (white goods – e.g. refrigerator appliances)
4. Self Powered systems – through Kilby labs (step-function innovation for technology 5 years out) - using intrinsic environment-derived (kinetic, thermal, RF) energy to store (in a thin film battery) and power small electronic devices

TI sees many opportunities to apply their experience to the Smart grid including communication applications in the home/wide are network. Today TI chipsets for the Smart Grid are employed on the meter-side. For enterprise applications, areas such power management/efficiency solutions  and optimization of battery management/density is also a TI expertise. TI solutions can reduce up to 50% energy consumption in data center-based server farms. Another area of opportunity is LED lighting. LEDs already   reduce power consumption with an efficiency improvement of over 10x compared to incandescent bulbs. TI sees a value-add green play by using the solid state device to become a sensor. Not only will the next generation light illuminate, it will collect information and turn on/off local thermostats, lighting and other electronics.  Other applications for embedded light circuits are security and atmospheric sensing. TI is currently researching this area more deeply with a learning lab that explores thermal properties, light balancing, power management and communication between sensors.

Structure embedded self powered sensors have show great promise. Work on embedding monitoring sensors in bridges can detect strain on bridge components and communicate potential issues to state authorities. Previous bridge collapses such as the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis are examples where long-lived sensors (potentially up to 100 years) could be used with no external power or wiring to monitor a structure’s health. Future personal healthcare monitoring applications could use energy generated by a person to power devices such as in a smart shirt. An individual can generate up to 100W a day. From the TI perspective, this is more than adequate energy to power its low-power electronics that would be embedded into clothing items.

The green tech audience brought up TI  consumer awareness which for many translate to TI-powered products such as Speak & Spell, TI-branded calculators and LCD projector systems. Beyond its product line, the most famous asset of TI is one of its engineers, Jack Kilby, who invented the thermal printer, integrated circuit and won a nobel prize in Physics.

Another areas raised by attendees was the area of environmental stewardship. TI has made great strides optimizing the wafer fabrication process and improved the management of the toxic waste generated. Their latest work for LEED certification was attributed to water reclamation and power reduction/efficiency. One of the more impressive illustrations of this was a reengineering effort to optimize water pumping systems (reduced # of pumps by 50%) in their facility that resulted in a significant energy reduction to run the new lab.

TI also is leader in smart meters / e-meters,  where they enjoy a 2/3 market share in this product category for embedded TI chips. In order to be a chip supplier to worldwide green products , TI’s approach is to be protocol/standard agnostic. In that regard TI has adopted, amongst other standards,  Zigbee for wireless device communication.  It is a popular standard in the US and is advancing with EU standard committees for use in smart meter in-home device communications for smart grids.

Chuck Hodges and the Optibike

Speakers

Heartland Renewable Energy – renewables-based natural gas production plants
Presented by George Howard, Managing Member

Heartland develops and delivers renewables-based natural gas ‘manufacturing plants’ which process organic waste streams in a proprietary form of anaerobic digesters. In addition to gas production, these production plants provide significant environmental benefits including greenhouse gas mitigation. This natural gas (clean methane) is transported by interstate gas pipeline to electric power plants for generating

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electric power that meets the Renewable Portfolio Standard which exists in many states. Residue from the gas plants is a high quality soil amendment (“compost”) for land reclamation, agriculture, erosion control and mitigation, and other purposes.

George first set the stage for anaerobic digesters. Their goal is to create natural gas or bio-gas as a next generation digester system with advanced overall performance compared to today’s existing municipal sewage systems. The digester can take animal waste, which is typically typically manure and uses the bacteria to produce bio-gas consisting of 40% CO₂, 60% methane and trace of hydrogen sulfide. The ultimate destination is California, which needs to fulfill it’s renewable energy portfolio standard. This alternative energy is highly regarded solution in Colorado and has the potential clearing the permitting process. There a re number of customers in California waiting to purchase these type of energy resulting in a good margin of return. This approach for removing green house gases has a significant effect. Farmers previously would be disposing manure by spreading it on fields and using it as a low-grade fertilizer, creating Nitrous Oxide emissions (300x more potent Green house gas then carbon monoxide on a per pound basis). This means a digester solution goes especially far for green house credits. The digester solution is flexible for its inputs and takes a number of agricultural wastes and food waste streams.

The plants to produce the gas look like a field of Olympic-sized swimming pools with domes

Examining the bio-gas plant’s internal system, most of the methane is removed when the slurry traverses the separation sub-system. The water vapor, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide are removed (and potentially resold) and the bio-gas is pressurized to 1500 psi. for interstate pipe transit. One downside is that potentially the CO2 may not be sold and will need to be released and the plant would then use a small portions of its own carbon credits for this. The plant they are building today is on 80 acres in Weld county and will produce 4700 mmBTU/day of pipeline grade quality gas or 5 mil. cubic foot/day and can support a 23-25MW electric power plant. This is equivalent to 170 natural gas wells over 30 years of operation. Unfortunately natural gas wells in old fields in Weld county have drop-off in capacity (up to 50% in a year) so this is also a factor in the number of wells needed to keep the equivalent plant running.

The plant design requires feed-in pipes to be built to the plant location. These pipes then will connect the plant to the interstate pipeline. The plant will include a water reclamation/treatment system (using desalination/reverse osmosis) to feedback water into the process.  A portion of the methane from the process is used to heat the plant. The system uses CO2 monitors to ensure the level is below 2%. The plant requires 5MW of power supplied from a rural energy co-op (at about 5.1 cents per KWh). The plant can process 1500 tons of waste a day and uses about 100,000 gal of “grey” water a day, (dirty water from an adjacent dairy farm).  In California, this methane fuel would cost 10-13 cents/KWh. Turns out anaerobic digester projects are harder for VCs to fund (since they need around 7x return in 8 years). The first Heartland plant uses project funding, which is closer to a condo/high rise building project return. George indicated they had a dutch uncle discussion earlier on financing and now are getting much better return for their project. Before the plant is operational all Colorado department of health certification must be passed.

Cool Energy – Powering a Clean Tomorrow

Presented by Sam Weaver, CEO

Cool Energy is a renewable energy equipment supplier in the growing field of distributed power systems.  Founded in 2006, the core technology under development is thermal energy conversion, and is applicable in solar power, waste heat recovery, and biomass combustion.  The initial SolarFlow^TM System product provides highly efficient solar collectors and a novel Stirling engine generator to enable a single solar system to provide 80% of the heating needs, 60% of the electricity needs, and nearly all of the hot water for a building while emitting no greenhouse gases.  Other applications include distributed geothermal and waste heat power production.

Cool Energy is based on Boulder, with 8 people on staff and a product that has 9 patents (current & pending). The core case for the cool energy system is the rising cost of home/small business costs for energy. Heating fuel costs are increasing 7.5-10% annually and electricity is seeing a 4% growth rate. An example from the customer perspective showed a 2/3 heating oil (space heat and water heat) and 1/3 electricity usage for a sample home in New Jersey. A standard PV solution only addressed the 1/3 electricity part of this bill.

The goal for cool energy systems is to cover 75% of the energy bill: 80% space heating, all the hot water and half electricity (large installation). Their system addresses areas that PV and solar thermal cannot – which is they can’t provide neither heat nor electricity. Comparatively PV can’t store energy or generate heat and solar-thermal can’t provide electricity. The Cool Energy system is managed by the control system.

The core technology is a stirling engine, that does not use combustion, needs no maintenance and can have a 20yr lifetime. The Cool Engine solution uses temperature differences (heat exchangers) to create motion (usually a piston) – it utilizes low-end temp differential with the high end at only at 250C.  Normally stirling engines go up to 650-1000C – which is more expensive to design as it needs to accommodate higher temperatures. There are evacuated tubes on the roof for solar collection, this can be used to heat-exchange water filled tubes for heat or used across the hot side of the stirling engine to generate electricity. This solution avoids 6 tones of CO2 over a year compared to conventional fossil systems.

The thermal storage is useful over cloudy days (most home heating utilize this). Typically load curves don’t match up to production curves for PV. With storage, the “cool energy” system can collect energy at peak  sun hours and then utilize the stored energy at peak demand hours. The stirling engine’s part of the design has an efficiency less than combustion fuels and less then conventional stirling engines as well but it does not get as hot and can be built from cheaper materials. Another benefits over PV systems is the Cool Energy system does not produce “semiconductor-waste” and can provide twice the return of PV .

The cost of a typical home system is 15-30K (with 30% tax credit) and with incentives, it has a 7-15 yr. payback. The convective radiator is twice as big as a car radiator and takes 50KWh/yr. to run. The controller uses the internet uses predictive weather information as well as local fuel rates to determine the appropriate energy generation. The engine operates with temperature ranges 100-200C in and 0-40C out.

Power Ecalene Fuels – Patented Thermochemical Process that Produces Mixed Alcohols (clean fuels)
Presented by Gene Jackson
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Power Ecalene Fuels, Inc possesses a unique patent pending gasification technology coupled with
patented catalyst technology that yields a low-cost, high-production and cleaner
burning fuel, Ecalene™.

Ecalene is meant to be a drop-in fuel and to replace ethanol. The name is registered, trademarked and named by Gene, he refers to it as Gene Ecalene. There are two existing patents with 10 being filed. The original feedstock was going to use beetle-kill lodge-pole pine feedstock and claims to convert one ton of wood to 186 gallons of Ecalene fuel.  The technology can take almost any type of feedstock such as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), spent tires, coal, medical waste, municipal west and natural gas. One benefit of ecalene is that its transportation method is preferred (and much easier) when compared to transporting natural gas which needs to be liquified (before transport).

Gene helped start two alternative fuel companies, one is the well known Range Fuels in Colorado. Their process is stacks up well against the competition and recovers 85% of the energy for any fuel stock. Registered with EPA as a fuel additive, their target is to replace the ethanol additive used in today’s gasoline. Their future plants will be about 70% of the cost of a typical ethanol plant. Ethanol will not be as cost-effective as agile as ecalene, especially with with a lower feedstock energy conversion then ecalene which produces 186 g/ton. The first plant will be 100 ton/day biofuel using beetle-kill as an intial feedstock – this output is around 4 tanker truck equivalents. The long term expectation is to put one ecalene plant in every municipality. The dynamic aspect of ecalene system has allowed it to co-locate with aglae production, utilizing a CO₂ and oxygen exchange between the two plants. Beyond the additive, Ecalane can be a standalone fuel for cars or be produced in biodiesel or jet-fuel.

The by-product of the ecalene product is ash which can be used for roadbed or other applications. The plants can be “fuel-agile” and support multiple feedstocks if it is designed for that purpose. The plant should be energy neutral, with the gasafier and endothermic/exothermic processes balancing each other out.

Optibike – 1000 mpg and have fun too !!Demo bike at the Meetup!!
Presented by Jim Turner, President and Chuck Hodges, CFO

Optibike builds the highest performance electric bikes in the world today, and seeks to firmly establish its premium brand as the Ferrari of electric bikes.  Optibike enables its customers to lose up to 20 lbs a year; reduce their risk of heart disease and diabetes by 30%; save $1000 a year; reduce their carbon emissions a metric ton per year; reduce their gasoline consumption by 325 gallons per year; and have fun.  All in no extra time.

The start of the presentation is a video of a dallas cowboy player, DeMarcus Ware, doing a testimonial for Optibike. DeMarcus and his wife use the bike extensive.  Optibike is designed to be rugged and easy to use. There were some humorous parts where DeMarcus talks about riding the bike all the time and wanting to make it go 50-65mph.

Optibike was founded in 1999 and their bikes are designed and made in Boulder. The company is already at profitable and growing. The core product markets to improving weight/health, fossil fuel depletion and climate change. Jim asked the meetup group questions on bike usage and was impressed with the response of a number of people riding over 40mi/week (although a good response from a  green conscience crowd). One of the reason, Jim pointed out, that people don’t ride their bikes is that it does not go fast enough or it goes slower then a car. The argument is that we could ride a motorbike but would miss out on the health element. An electric bike would assist us up steeper hills or in the foothills around Boulder, while still allowing the rider to pedal like on a “regular” bike when feasible. Another testimonial indicated that a car commute of 40-50 min is  just over 1 hr. for an Optibike ride.  The  mileage figure for an Optibike ride is the equivalent of 1000 mpg. It uses less then a 1KWh and has a range of 40 miles,. Energy return then is better then a solar/PV installation.

Around the world e-bikes are growing significantly. In Europe 700K units have been sold and in China aroudn 20 mill. units have sold and trailing but growing US growth (around 75K units/year) is growing at 40%. The overall market today is around 1-2 Billion. Opti-bike holds the title for the most expensive e-bike in the world, with one of their limited-edition bike. Optibike builds what they consider the best premium quality e-bike on the market. There are 6 bike models in their product line. The earliest bike cost 5K. There are a number of patent designs around the design and they have years of production experience.

As for performance, single charge lasts for 40 miles and takes 8 hrs to charge (costing around 10 cents). The battery has a 3 yr./30k warranty. The replacement cost of the battery is 1500 dollars. The bike is aluminum frame and weighs 55 pounds. There is no regenerative breaking, as it did not make sense for the bike since it is mostly coasting. Right now the cost is on the high end since they are a boutique shop, but it also has significant quality related to gearing and electronics that make it easier to use then its competitors. The electric system works in parallel with pedaling. You pedal-only, use electric drive or a hybrid mode that employs both. A recent article in national geographic featured the e-bike trend that highlight the Optibike. There is a cardio-monitor design upcoming in future products as well as more advances in designs allows for software to control electronic shifting and other functions.

The August meeting had a good turnout (for the vacation month of August). We had a slightly scaled back session with 3 speakers along with co-hosts Kevin Geminiuc and Marc Wheeler filling in for Kris Wiessenfeld.

Announcements

• RETool Course

Take advantage of a one-day executive education course on the essentials of renewable electricity offered by CU-Boulder on Thursday, October 29 at the Denver Chamber of Commerce. For more information please visit: http://Leeds.colorado.edu/RETool

Greg Cook from American Electric Vehicles

Speakers

In the Circle of Life – Go Green, Literally
Presented by Ed Gazvoda, Founder

The green play of this company is to replace crematory facilities with a more environmentally-friendly   (90% less fossil fuel, 94% carbon dioxide) and less costly (15% less cost) solution for the remains of a beloved pet. Circle of life has a solution for the death management of pets and expects to use this technology to provide an alternative to human cremation. Today it primarily works with veterinaries that are asked to have their pets disposed after their death.

Ed was very upbeat about their growth and opportunities given a sell rate of 50% to convert current crematory customers over to the their circle of life solution. The market size is around 75K pets deaths/yr, of which 50% are cremated which aligns with approximately 5 pet deaths per 100 humans. The benefits of cremation of a pet is the eradication of disease and prion based disease such as wasting diseases.  In order to calculate the amount of carbon reduction, Ed went through the exercise of calculating weights such as a 150 lb. of flesh which is the equivalent of 124 gallons of fuel burnt.  Inventor is Joe Wilson invented the process in 1991. Ed had had previous experience with starting green technology companies and most recently started FuelTek.

The cost is half of cremation, and plans are going to 25% of american market. The revenue model is $20/pet and this solution is 15% lower. Dislike for pet cemeteries by human cemeteries. With 6.8B people there is a demand in death market. There are really no patents on this area, described as a land grab, with exclusive rights for the US

The technology is based on Alkaline Hydrolysis that takes around 18 hours and leaves only bones with no DNA or remnants of any disease . A nylon shroud is used in the process so the remaining bones can be returned to the owner or the remains can be used for compost. In the them of circle of life, Ed emphasized that the best green alternative is to use the remains back to the earth.  Bone meal and bone broth can created and sold back to farms and close the final loop on the circle.  

Farms will pay $200/ton for bone meal and $40/ton for the nutritious broth.

Further questions were asked by the group, such as the barrier to entry, which in this case is about 1 million. Ed expects to share the market which is large enough to still potentially valuate his company at 100 million if all goes well. Other questions brought up whether pets are cremated together or separately and it turns out to lower the price (to $40) animals are usually cremated together. There is somewhat a deceptive practice which means sometimes the remains returned are not originating exclusively from your pet. The only service that does it individually as Ed recalls is Precious memory.

CleanCoal Briquette Inc. – The Viable Clean Coal Option
Presented by Ravi Malhotra

CCBI is in the business of creating an energy source (a burnable briquette) from coal plant waste stream by combining fly ash or coal fines with sawdust/biomass. The briquette can be re-burned at the coal plant, increasing it’s efficient use of it acquired coal. This opportunity is created from the increasing cost and regulatory environment of disposing off Fly Ash and the potential for toxic accidents.

To provide a little background also on the coal fly ash product and its consituents the following is from wikipedia

Fly ash is generally captured from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, and is one of two types of ash that jointly are known as coal ash; the other, bottom ash, is removed from the bottom of coal furnaces.

The production of coal waste is a large scale problem today. Over 5 billion tons of coal mined annually from 2300 coal mines around the world. Of the 1.1.B tons/yr of coal mined, 5% is left over as coal fine, this fine is reused (75%) and the remaining 25% of the waste is impounded. The result is billions and billions of tons of coal fine is stored in the mountains and valleys (close to coal plants). Over 131 million tons of fly ash is produced annually in the U.S. with 57% of this required to be impounded. An example provided talked to Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) disaster in Dec 2008 where a three hundred acre breakage in a fly ash impoundment broke, creating to date over 1 billion in clean up cost and may cost over another billion before its done.

The technological challenge then is to provide a useful product from this waste. CCBI’s solution combines fly ash or coal fine with a biomass that can originate from many sources such as agricultural waste, wood,

Blackball hd

lignin (byproduct of cellulosic fuel production) The Sixth Sense on dvd or starch. The engagement with coal facility involves setting up onsite at the coal plant and having a source of biomass brought in. The facility once running,  combines the fly ash and biomass feedstock onsite to create briquettes and is then added to coal furnace directly after. This process allows for the fly ash to be redirected into the briquette production facility without any storage in an impoundment center. The mixture of biomass feedstock to the fly  ash is dependent on a number of factors that the company has built intellectual property around.

The company was started 4-5 years ago based on discussions with coal plant managers with a costly problem of paying to remove fly ash. Other related discussions with producers of unwanted biomass/wood waste revealed problems with disposal since they could not burn their waste.

These two issues are see a solution in the technology solution developed by CCBI. Additionally many companies produce biomass as a waste and this too could be obtained at low cost. The foundation of the company stemmed from work at iCAST (international center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology) at the engineering department in CU Boulder area in 2004. Subsequently the lab proved the concept in 2006 and commercial success was achieved in 2007. Once the process was perfected the founder Ravi Malhotra filed for a patent. Research was done in strategic partnerships with universities (CSU Dept. of Forestry) and with support of the departments of energy, commerce and agriculture. Ravi shared that early on the chance of government funding this endeavor was one in three now funding is more scarce and the ratio, he estimates is closer to one in 50 or 100.

Ravi went on to estimate the addressable market for their solution broken into two segments. Coal Fines at 13M. tons/yr.  impounded or 41.6M tons/yr potential briquettes or a $2.08B/yr. market. The target market for Fly Ash is closer with 15-20K tons/yr of fly ash with an estimated 36 mil tons.yr of briquettes produced creating a market of $1.8Bil/yr. The fly ash market should provide better returns for coal plants that were built before 1967 and burn inefficiently producing fly ash with 50% unburned carbon. The biomass market opportunity is  targets 70+ paper and pulp companies in the US (having both a onsite power plant and a source of biomass). Then there are companies that have captive coal power plants, such as the Cement, steel and other larger scale industries. This market is estimated at 105 mil/yr. All the above calculation assumes that briquettes can be sold for the same price as coal, a production tax credit can be realized (at 1cent/KWh) and renewable energy credits and carbon offset values can be applied. The calculation also includes the reduced cost from eliminating the need for fly ash disposal.

The two business models offered are 1) build/own/operate the plant and 2) license the technology. In the build/own/operate model, CCBI will build the plant, pay rent and sell the briquettes directly to the customer. For licensing, revenue sources come from consulting, setup fees and royalty based on tons of briquettes produced. The revenues sources include the transportation savings in removal of waste, the BTU value of the briquettes ( about 2/3 that of coal) and all incentive, grants and loans. Overall this solution helps companies reduce their CO2 emissions by 50-75%.

Competitor in the clean coal space include CoalTek, Great Point Energy, Evergreen Energy. Briquette companies include – Greenfields coal company and Renewable fuel technologies. These companies have similar product but CCBI advantage is that it has a process that does not require a permit to burn the biomass.

Some good questions were raised at the end of the presentation. One was about the fly ash that does get used, the 57% is not used, leaving 43% that is used for roads, building materials, cement industry. There is a significant team behind the company and a bright future helping to make our cola plant more efficient.

American Electric Vehicles – Complete Solutions for Electric Vehicles
Presented by Greg Cook

AEV is an electric vehicle  drivetrain company in Monument colorado. Currently in startup mode with 12 employees, the expectation is to ramp up to 30 people by end of  2010 . This is a company of veterans dating back to the EV1 and deep experience in Li-Ion batteries, motors, battery chargers and power electronics. Previous to AEV, a number of team members came worked at CompactPower in similar technology but chose not to move from Colorado to their new home in Michigan. A noteworthy company as well since it just landed a 115 Million stimulus grant and has contributed to the EV1 design. Members have left this team along with the original founder, Dr. Dan Rivers, to create the new AEV company.

The current source of revenue is primarily engineering services but the target is focus the technology suite towards licensing with customers in India and China and eventually products to this growing market. Selling electric vehicles is a much a larger step and this foundation is being laid down with experience and relationship building with partners. Today the technology is advancing through converting existing vehicles with drivetrain systems.

A core competitive advantage is the AEV has an integrated suite. To work on drivetrains , experience is required in the popular Li-Ion battery packs and charging solutions, electric motor design and electronics. AEV helps take away the headaches of integration away from their OEM partners. This experience has resulting in filing for IP in  PhotoVoltaic Collectors, Battery Pack Systems and Battery Management Systems.

The first area of focus Greg introduced was the battery pack and power management system. A typical configuration is 15-20kWh energy capacity providing a rating of 250 VDC allowing for a 200,000 km lifespan. The battery system is the overall most expensive part of the solution, so the rating of the size for the application is very important. The management system monitors the cells and overall health, ensuring safe operation, extending battery life and reducing the costs related to the battery. Battery monitoring information is used by the management system to notify and control other vehicle systems.  AEV can also integrate a third part battery pack and PMS into their drivetrain solution.

Electric motors are another area of specialty and the IPM series motor, the same type as in a Prius,  has been selected for their technology suite.  AEV is also developing their own motor from scratch with the goal of 50% reduction in size, 60% reduction in weight and leveraging intrinsic IPM key benefits such as no contact points and extremely long life.

The last two components are the motor controller and smart charger systems. The motor controller developed is a 400V 400 Amp system that support bidirectional operation and converts the DC battery source to AC through an inverter system. The controller communicates with the BMS to ensure battery protection. The current design is being designed for a wide range of voltages to allow for flexibility in different configurations and power output in the 100kW range. The battery charger system is being designed to take advantage of the grid, with a 5000W 80-240 VAC input range. The expected charge time is 3-4 hrs depending on the line voltage.

Penetration into international markets is a key area for AEV. Their relationship and delivered solutions span a number of customers such as SAIC, SEM in china and Tata in India. The integration projects provide a great technology proving ground and demonstration platform. Some of the examples shown are vehicles at the 1000 kg weight class with 100 mile ranges with 5kW AEV charges and PMS systems.  This work has been applied to military vehicles including an all-electric reconnaissance vehicle using LG LMO (Lithium Manganese Oxide) batteries (16-24kWh power rating) and a 50kW motor.

Partnerships include NREL and USCAR. NREL has provided resources to help validate and test AEV equipment, thus accelerate development. USCAR similarily has provided a collaborative environment to help AEV achieve its goals. Some good questions from the audience, one questioning the role and competitve landscape in the new automotive landscape. AEV found they partnered with experts in their respective fields. AEV looks for partner companies that are respective experts in their fields such as automotive chasis manufacturing/design or aerodynamics. These companies that require EV drivetrain expertise and integration experience will then build solution together with AEV. Another area of interest was on types of battery technologies. AEV indicated both Korea and China as good suppliers for batteries and they are experimenting with many technologies including  Maganese Dioxide and Iron Phosphate chemistries. Tend to like larger form factors (10-20 AmpHour).

Choke psp

Well we had another hot July day in Boulder. Out meeting was cool with the help of Coolerado demo truck (cooling down attendees in the parking lot) and the law building A/C!

Announcements

• Gavin Nachbar(gavin@nachbar.com) is a nationally published freelance writer seeking greentech stories.

I am looking for investors and entrepreneurs who either are involved with a business in the earlier stages (nofunding, angel round, etc.) or any company, or invention idea, that has not received much press. I have particular interest in exposing those interesting, but under covered, ideas.

• Kris mentioned in the meeting that we will start to put together a stimulus support section on our website. This will assist new green tech businesses in determining if they qualify and how to take advantage of stimulus money.
• Also Kris made a call out to meetup attendees (specifically grant writers or people with experience submitting stimulus grants) to submit information and stories to contribute to our site

The “Coolerado” demonstration truck.

Speakers

Holme Roberts & Owen (HRO), Melody Harris
Stimulus Package – What’s in it for Green Tech Companies

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) was signed into law in February 17th, 2009 at Natural History Museum in Denver. There is a  significant amount of money available (nominally 787 billion). As Melody noted, the complexity of accessing this money creates significant hurdles and understanding the legislation is a harrowing endeavor. See the opencongress.org version for the full text. HRO is a specialist in advising companies trying to obtain stimulus money but was gracious enough to give some free information with the disclaimer that her presentation did not constitute legal advice. The presentation provided only a high level view of available dollars and relevant items to attendees who are interested in pursuing stimulus money and grants. Melody pointed out that they provide full services in this area to the general public by appointment at their offices in Denver.

Big ticket money allocation in the ARRA act are in the following categories

• Counter-cyclical funds
• Flexible Funds
• Health IT
• Transportation Infrastructure
• Alternative Energy R&D
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

This first area, counter-cyclical funds is targeted towards states (Colorado is receiving a good share) to help balance budgets based on tax shortfalls. This money is directed at specific areas such as a higher education. Flexible funds as well are being used to help provide waivers on interest for Small Business Administration

• Fragments movies

Mirrors film

• We Are Marshall movie download

(SBA) loans over 100K. Health IT includes advanced medical record and productivity technologies that health providers are being encouraged to adopt. Transportation includes upgrades to highway infrastructure.  The remaining two areas are green technology and the focus for the remainder of the presentation.

The energy provisions in the act have direct federal dollars as well as funding for state level disbursement (e..g weatherize). State level money is available typically from the governor’s energy office (GEO).  Federal dollars for energy are available as loan guarantees (around $6B) and as Tax Incentives in the follow areas

• Investment Tax Credit (ITC) – (e.g building a wind farm)
• Production Tax Credit (PTC) – (e.g. operating a wind farm)
• Manufacturing tax Credit – (manufacturing renewable energy equipment)
• Grants in Lieu

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is an advocacy for green tech, and members can receive email alerts to group calls on topics such as grants in lieu. Recently they were meeting on tax credits and on the subject of converting ITC and PTC credits to up front cash or grants in lieu. These grants are mainly intended for purchasing of renewable energy equipment (e.g. PV panels) for utility scale projects.

Targeted technologies are also allocated significant monies as follows:

• Smart Grid – $4.5B
• Advanced Batteries/Storage – $2B
• Advanced Fossil Energy (CO2 capture) – $3.4B
• R&D Renewable Energy Projects – $2.5B

Given the focused funding to these areas, there seems to very little opportunity for funding outside of these areas. The federal grant website www.grants.gov provides a tool to research funding opportunities in targeted technologies/others. This site crosses a number of federal agencies that have stimulus money such as Department of defense, labor, interior, agriculture, etc. and provides alerts called funding opportunity announcements (FOA).  This is not the only source for funding and Melody recommended their services to help navigate all the possible sources and provide the most efficient use of resources for startup green tech companies.

Another option for funding is the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee program. They provide loan guarantees for specific components of renewable energy systems that can be one or two levels down from the finished product. The new program focuses on hardware.  It no longer requires innovative technology but still requires a participating lender.  Previously, the program was slow; case in point: Solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a guarantee after 2 1/2 years. The new Energy Secretary has promised to speed up the process. See the DOE Loan Guarantee website for more information.

State level programs are administered primarily by the GEO in Colorado and are a great place to start looking for funding. The primary area for funding is the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) program. Colorado will receive 80 million over the next three year to fund WAP. In order to get monies, you need to an approved/preferred vendor. I’ve located the full text on WAP - the opencongress.org site (sec 407). Colorado will also allocate 45 million over the next three years for Energy Efficiency and Carbon Reduction (EECBG). The bulk of the funds will be dispersed to local municipalities and governments and the remaining 9 million will be processed by the Colorado Govenors Energy Office (GEO). A key part of getting this money is building relationships with local governments and cities such as Denver (which is receiving around 7 mill. of the 45 mill. ).  It’s also helpful to bring a unique technology to the table that will allow you to stand out from the other potential recipients for funding. Some of the high demand areas for efficiency are the following:

• transportation/fleet conversions
• building efficiencies
• recycling
• lighting retrofits (LEDs, etc.)
• Renewable Energy projects – solar, wind, biomass

The state of Colorado has submitted its State Energy Plan (SEP) to the Department of Energy (DOE) on 5/12 of 2009 and is awaiting approval. This plan should receive 50 million over three years. Other related programs such as the Renewable Energy Development is going to mainly channeled through the existing rebate program for purchasers of solar panels. Existing NEED grants will also be funded with 19 Million. Carl from Hybrids Plus was in the audience and had received grant for R&D but it is considered to be small in relation to the other potential grants available. The State Energy Program has a good potential for direct money and services such as workforce training and education. See the Colorado Energy website for more details on its intended usage of recovery money.

Kris and Melody offered some advice on creating opportunities by targeting/educating end users and local municipalities on potential use of the grant money assigned to them. From the audience we did hear some good stories on current grants in progress. One story was regarding a grant for 20 Million that is still pending. For a grant of this size, the effort required consultants, company labor and cost 30K to prepare. Another experience pertained to electric car grants. They applied for three grants with potential values of 1.2M, 4.5M and 8.2M. Their advice was three fold, use experienced grant writers preferably PhD’s, use a good accountant and partner with others who contribute and share in the delivery. Their effort involved partnering with colleges to help share the workload which included 3-4 weeks of gathering and 3-4 weeks of consolidating/writing/editing.

Another great story was about chasing down city money and working to help divert it from public projects (example of using LED intersection lights) into more beneficial private projects (e.g  green building project). Using partnerships and existing relationships in cities/municipalities was key to doing this. The cities and funding available can be found on the DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy state information pages. Another opportunity area in connection with cities is they have numerous funds related to energy audits. The cities lack skilled resources to perform these, so they need for education and training - this is a good opportunity to seek out.

Towelhead aka Nothing Is Private buy A grant reviewer in the audience also provided feedback on how to fill in grant forms. She recommends to read all the grant material carefully and fill in all the optional sections. The expectation is that company/grantees need to have partners, letters from customers, Memorandum of Understandings (MOU) from customers. On the federal level, Kris noted there is a lot of federal money available but this would require General Service Administration (GSA) certification to validate you are a real/valid company with accounts receivable/etc. Given this process takes 6-9 months, any company not having this today would probably miss out on ARRA grant money. Another comment from the audience was made in the regard that Department of Defense has sizable grant money available and that they do not require General Service Administration (GSA) certification.

I’ve include another item from the NPR’s Cook County Weatherization story revealing that stimulus money requires workers be paid the prevailing wage. In Cook County, Chicago the prevailing wage for weatherization is $35-52/hr limiting the effectiveness of stimulus money for those projects.

Invener S.A., Nicolas Kuhlenthal and Judd Rogers
Investment in Chilean Clean Energy

Invener, a Chilean based energy development company,  presented a refreshing view from outside the U.S. on green tech development abroad. They stopped by our meeting after visiting NREL regarding collaboration/partnerships regarding renewable energy. The purpose of their visit was to network, look for suppliers (especially for wind) and financial partners.  Invener was started in 2007 and have completed work on two thermal-electric diesel developments (around 140 MW capacity) in northern Chile. They are currently working on three mini-hydro developments that will generate 3MW of power.

Judd started to lay the foundation of why Americans should invest in Chile and how Invener fits into that picture. Invener brings to the table a team that would support plan execution, established relationships with government & industry and a pipeline of projects with good market return (up to 18%). Chile is positioned as a strong market opportunity to do business. It has Free Trade Agreements with most large countries and is an investor-grade country (typically rated by Moody investor services). Chile is experiencing a perfect storm for renewable energy potential with great natural resources and capital markets for financing, almost no fossil fuels and has a captive market as they now experience energy shortages.

Chile has large natural geography being the longest country in the world at over 4000 miles. Two isolated main transmission networks make up for 98% of power delivery. The north grid supplies power to heavy industry(90% industry/10% city) and the greater Santiago grid (ISC) supplies power to the central part of the country and to 92% of the population. The north grid had changed recently.  It was previously running on natural gas, but it had to convert over to diesel when Argentina cutoff a pipeline supplying the area. The fallout of this is that the mining industry and others in the north are paying around $450 per MWh power rates, while the Santiago grid cost is around $120 per MWh and employing hydro-based power.  With hydro however, recent droughts are impacting Chile’s power grid with blackouts.  Demand is growing on both grids and approaching per capital levels of the U.S., culminating in an energy crises and a great opportunity.

The potential for renewables are broad in Chile. The north is a dry dessert and amenable for PV solar, concentrated solar, geothermal, wind and biofuel based renewable energy. It’s rating for solar energy is higher then the Mohave desert at 8Kw/square meter.   The Chilean government is aggressively investing in new renewable plants with RFP issues for 1MW PV plant and a 10MW CSP plant. There is also 300MW of wind projects in the pipeline to be developed. A number of projects are being developed specifically for industry with mining concerns looking to have their own power generation typically using PV, CSP solar. An interesting note is that Chile was one of the first to privatize it’s energy market. They are looking at spot prices (energy bought beyond current contracted amounts) declining from a high of $120MWh to around $70MWh in the near future. These rates are still attractive allowing for potential 18% return on assets.

The core value proposition is the cost to enter the market is lower in Chile and the cost of development is cheaper. Chile has also strengthened it’s foreign investment laws and believes in the rule of law. They already have a number of foreign companies that own mining operations – companies from Spain, U.S. and Canada. There are a number of issues to navigate.  Water is an important resource in the Northern part of the country. In the desert, there is a need to work with the government on water rights since water resources are operationally important to mining companies located in the region. For more information please email Felipe at felipe.oettinger@invener.com

Green House Data, Shawn Mills
100% Wind powered GREEN Data Center

Green House Data has returned to our green tech meetup with great news: they are now fully 100% wind powered. There facility broke ground in 2008 and with recent additions of co-generation facilities (on-site) their facility pulls from two wind sources: the Cheyenne 35MW wind energy plant and/or their local wind operations. They also have plans to add 3 more local 100KW wind generators to their location. The core value proposition is that harnessing green energy and energy efficient equipment/design can compete and beat their data center competitors on price while maintaining a low carbon footprint.

With 2.5M in a sales pipeline and 2.2 million in grant money from Wyoming, their green data center concept is moving along well. Echostar is a strategic partner with Green House and is co-located in the same business park, allowing Green House Data to leverage  an enormous amount of broadband for their clients. Growth in demand for data centers is huge and opportunity demand currently outstrips supply by 3:1. This raises the spectre that data centers will pollute more then airlines by 2020.  So, the need to use carbon neutral power is evident. Wyoming provides unique benefits:

• Lower energy prices
• local wind generation
• 240 days of Wyoming cold air for cooling
• Next generation energy efficiency racks
• scalable/modular technology

While leveraging these benefits, they save 30% in operational costs and pass this on as a 10% discount to their customers. Green House is very active in promoting this model with articles in information week, zdnet and speaking engagements at conferences such as data center world. This is an active area of research for a number of large companies such as Microsoft and IBM who are acknowledging startling statics such as an EPA analysis suggesting data centers will use 1.5% of energy generated in the U.S.

Green House Data takes their SLA contracts seriously and have a 100% uptime assurance where they pay a penalty for outage time. Their facilities support everything from a full enterprise hosting solution to a single server system.  Today GHD hosts 2500 customers in their 500 sq. ft. facility. In the future they expect to expand this and are working on funding the construction of a  new 1700 sq. ft. facility.

Coolerado, Tony McDonald Armageddon download
The Greenest Way To Stay Cool

Coolerado provides high efficiency cooling units for both residential and business clients based on an indirect evaporative technology. Swamp coolers are different than indirect evaporite systems in that they take warm air and use water evaporation to cool. The drawback of swamp coolers is they can put over 3000 lbs. of water into a home over a 24 hr. period. The coolerado unit does not create humidity and claims a 10x comfort improvement. Indirect evaporite technology has benefits over traditional A/C unit which can use over 10 times the amount of electricity (Arvada example referenced is a 20 ton traditional A/C unit using 30KW and the Coolerado unit using 3KW). Tony provided the three green aspects of the Coolerado product:

• money green with 10x less electricity
• environmental green (less electricity-less water as net-zero water in aggregate )
• health green by using fresh air that is filtered for dust pollens and allergens

The addressable domestic market for cooling is $18 Bil. with a 3% annual growth rate. Worldwide this market is $66 Bil. (13% growth rate). In many newly emerging countries people are rapidly adopting air conditioning and  buying the best A/C units available. Similarily water usage is a consideration when it is a limited resource giving indirect evaporite a competitive advantage. Cutting electrical usage with the Coolerado advantage is significant in hot countries where peak hour demand is rising and so is the utility rates.  A/C accounts for 50% peak hour usage in the U.S. and  in Dubai it can be as much as 70%.

An example deployment for the product is a plastic injection molding facility in Colorado that makes Pepsi bottles. The Injection factory used to use a 200 ton A/C unit to cool a 150K sq. ft. facility in aggregate (40K sq. ft. in the actual molding facility). It cost 250K a year to cool the facility and this solution did not work well with most of the plant having 85 deg peak temps and production areas hitting 130 deg. The Coolerado system helped bring down the temperature significantly while cost only 15K.  The overall solution included an  improved airflow solution. The savings in electricity allowed for a 13 month pay back.  The 10yr. cash flow savings is expected to be $2.4 Million.

The product is net water zero. Tony walked us through this explanation since the product does use water to cool. This conclusion comes from the re electricity consumption the product uses zero water since places such as California and Colorado use water to make electricity. The rate for Colorado is 1.2 gal/KWh and 4.6 gal/KWh in California, so that energy efficiency of the A/C unit makes it use less electricity and in turn uses net zero or negative water. The Coolerado unit does need to be connected to a water line.  Another advantage of the product is that it performs better in hot dry locations such as Colorado. In fact as the temperature increases to 96 deg. and higher, the traditional A/C units can’t keep up while the Coolerado continues to operate well.

The core unit is made in Denver with source components are made in California. The inventor is a Ukranian PhD who defected in the 70s. The product has been vetted by the federal government which has been recommended its usage. Customers range from the Gordon Biersch to Southwest and Federal facilities (e.g. AISO.net data center). Tony gave some impressive stats for the 6 ton demo truck/trailer that he brought to the meeting. The trailer mounted unit can be used to cool a 3000 sq ft. building on the power of 1/3 of hair dryer (50-600W). All the technology and intellectual property is patented.

Their product is available today for residential and business. The unit works well in the southwest and geographically ends in Texas/Nebraska boundaries. The home units are sold through empire gas and electric. A good question was raised on how the evaporite solution worked without adding humidity. It was described as cooling a secondary flow. supporting both evaporation and heat transfer in the same unit.

• Casper’s Scare School dvd

We had a great turnout for this meeting, thanks everyone for filling in our new venue nicely. Networking again is proving to be a very popular part of the meeting and there is plenty of space at law building  to do this now. ToughStuff worked the crowds before and after the meeting from their promotional table in the front entrance. There was a good sized crowd that wanted to see their durable solar panel from  last meeting.

Announcements

• Green tech happy hour – 4th thursday of every month, St. Julien
• CU tech transfer office, looking for chemistry/chemical engineering licensing associate – https://www.cu.edu/techtransfer/about/job_boulder_chem_lic_associate.html

Speakers

Infleksion, Brian Kromer
The Stationary Model – Stationary Compliance & Climate Change Market Profiling

Infleksion is an information company that provides Environmental Intelligence on Stationary Energy Markets. Environmental Intelligence provides valuable knowledge to a number of clients through reports and dashboards. Clients can data mine for patterns on industry compliance for emissions, (e.g. air/water/land discharge and GHG-green house gases) using filters to target a potential market.  The market datasets focus on stationary businesses (local power plants, factory/industry) versus mobile (transportation). Infleksion software and services also provide finely grained knowledge to help examine facilities by fuel type, location and equipment and this empowers the client to make a more informed decision on where to deploy their technology. Extending this solution, information on the burgeoning carbon credit market can be made part of a report. Understanding where a credit can be received, provides clients with exceptional cost savings and competitive advantage . Federal Climate legislation is validating Brian’s work with Infleksion. In June 2009 a success vote passed that was the:

first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change

Future energy demand is critical to understand stationary markets. Brian set the stage by examining the DOE/EIA International Energy Outlook. This graph projects demand from known consumption in 1980 projected out to 2030 of World Marketed Energy by Fuel type.  The graph(s) imply that that the increase in worldwide demand for energy sources such as oil, coal, renewables and natural gas fuels is growing significantly. How do we plan for energy types with existing and new compliance legislation? Infleksion helps model these scenarios – matching fuel type to industrial application to emission to location providing a landscape of the current environment (e.g. natural gas energy plant using a reciprocating engine complying with Colorado or Federal GHG/pollution emission standards ).

Where Infleksion breaks from the pack is it detailed knowledge on industries, machinery and regulation. It’s environmental intelligence is built on a collection of EPA, DOE and state agency datasets and other industrial information on machinery developed by its founder. Stationary datasets include Electricity Generation and Industry segments which account for 50% of the US Carbon footprint and 12.5% of the world footprint. The software product also helps to define and estimate using the new international currency denomination of climate change known as Carbon Dioxide Equivalency or CO₂e.

Carbon dioxide equivalency is a quantity that describes, for a given mixture and amount of greenhouse gas, the amount of CO₂ that would have the same global warming potential (GWP), when measured over a specified timescale (generally, 100 years). Carbon dioxide equivalency thus reflects the time-integrated radiative forcing, rather than the instantaneous value described by CO₂e.

The opportunity identified is the target market of 800K facilities in the US which are monitored for discharge to the Air, Land or Water.  Monitoring by the EPA for these operations will soon include Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.  Infleksion has entered this market with both a software and services offering. Early clients served are in the energy sector.

At the end of the presentation a number of example reports were displayed. The first slide showed natural gas transmission points by county for the whole of the US. A second slide showed Weld County, CO with one of the highest number of facilities for natural gas processing. Brian mentioned Rocky Mountains only holds 8% of all natural gas in the US, but apparently Colorado is a hub for specialized processing. Just north in Wyoming there were some of highest densities of natural gas transmission points in the nation.

Liquid Asset Development, Gregory Majersky
Take control of your water’s quality

Liquid Asset Development markets the design and the fabrication process to make water filtration systems using pervious concrete. At the core of this solution is the social cause to provide a sustainable and accessible solution for poor nations as well as developed nations to clean their polluted water supply. The current product focus is on cleaning up mining and heavy metal pollution from industrial waste water and filtering agricultural runoff such as nitrogen/phosphorous and microorganisms.

Pollution from mines has presented a problem for over 10,000 years. Toxicity from acid mine drainage can pollute a local water supply when abandoned mines are flooded and the appropriate safety accommodations have not been made. This toxicity is claimed to be more dangerous in low pH waters to aquatic life and to the local resident consuming it. Ironically, this wastewater provides value in a reclamation process, containing a number of high value metals  such as Vanadium or Tritium that pays over 1000 dollars per ounce. The issue around water needs to be addressed as growing tension around ownership and usage of clean water supplies are leading to legal battles (over water diversion and overuse) in areas such as the SouthWest states,  Great Lakes Compact and Mississippi River states. Most developing nations are protective to the point of using armed tactics to protect their water resources. Locations such as Africa where Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia count on the Nile, Central Asia water routes are being disputed by Russia and China/India where disputes and threats stem from water diversions from the Tibet Plateau. Many people rely on this water and once polluted their situation is so dire they drink without any filtration bringing upon themselves an enormous health risk.

The Tibetan plateau is the ‘Principal Asian watershed and source of ten major rivers’. Tibet water travels to eleven countries and are said to bring fresh water to over 85% of Asian population, approximately 50% of world’s population. Four of these ten rivers: the Brahmaputra, Indus, Yangtze, and Mekong have their head water on the Tibetan plateau.

Desalination is not practical on a large scale for many countries. UAE has one of the largest desalination plants in the world. Florida has the largest US desalination operation but dwarfs in comparison with 12% capacity compared to UAE’s Jebel Ali Plant. Some of the issues are the power consumption, screening organisms, marine life & debris, and pH elevation requirements. Florida’s Tampa Bay Water faced with 5 years of engineering problems and operation at 20% capacity due to marine life and growth captured and stuck to reverse osmosis filters prior to fully utilizing this facility in 2007. With pervious concrete, pre-treatment of water for higher pH and debris filtering could potentially bring down these issues and costs.

Enter the Pervious Concrete solution. This material allows for 3-8 gallons per min of water to flow per on square foot of concrete. It is approximately 15-25% void structure that utilized no sand in its construction. It recognized by the EPA for stormwater filtration as well as 30 years in parking lots for removing brake dust, brake fluid and oil. It supports a high pH environment and does well is cold conditions. It excels over carbon filters in filtering polluted waters which contain metals.

Liquid asset is in the research phase and has proven their product in extensive trials on polluted waters by removing:

• 85-99% of iron
• 60-70% sodium
• 74% zinc, 65% copper
• 60% sulfate

Their addressable market for acid mine drainage and recovery of metals is $200M/yr. annual spend and $40 Billion globally. Remediation in Pennsylvania alone for AMD is $23 Mil. / year and state-wide sludge based metals recovery could recoup millions of dollars. The pre-treatement desalination market is estimated to be $25 Billion by 2010. Greg provided more desalination markets data.

Liquid asset Development is look for startup capital at the time of this writing. More laboratory and 3rd party validation is required beyond their initial product tests with replaceable modules.  They are looking for skilled resources in hydrology, chemistry and other specialties to help expand their product to commercial applications. Their market and first stage expansion plans involve both  developing world and local commercial applications. They are looking for investor and advisors with international client contacts. With a sustainable product to provide clean water and a revenue stream to recover value metals, Liquid Assets is an attractive investment startup opportunity.

SolarTech, Lambert Bunker
Real Solar Power

SolarTech designs and delivers HCPV (High Concentration Photovoltaic) solar systems. Their product offering is an patented solar panel that claims 36.7% efficiency at 50W/cm squared and a concentrator technology that magnifies the sun 400 times. Amplification is achieved with custom Fresnel lenses and the product with tracking system supports usage in extreme wind conditions. The product roots were from Sandia National Laboratories research and has operational success on the grid for over a decade. New technology utilizing triple junction solar cells has been added to their current product. Their latest system costs have made them competitive supplying power at a competitive $1.85/W.

Globally and domestically the market potential for solar technology is huge. Market demand will be enhanced by the lucrative 43B made available from the recovery act in 2009. Previous to recover act, existing global solar revenue in 2006 was at $16B. Today there are 6000 MW of identified US projects that will utilize solar. SolarTech has chosen to narrow their focus to mid-range commercial, agriculture, remote and municipal markets that deploy in high sun conditions. Their newest product architecture is a roof-mounted system that can support large scale commercial or smaller size residential deployments. Their product line can be engineering to work with best of breed solutions and tailored to a customer’s special needs.

The plan for growth is to continue and extend a multi-channel distribution chain, including energy developers, equipment dealers, solar installers and direct first run channels. Licensing is also available to other distributors and this is the expected long-term strategy once the newest product lines have been operationalized at large scale.

The primary driving factor to solar adoption is efficiency and sustainability. Concentrators are meeting this issue by reducing the need for silicon (reduce by 1/175 material), which in turn reduces landfill by 1/3. It provides a sustainable product with 99% recyclable material.  SolarTech is innovating at the leading edge of concentrated solar and expects to see great opportunity in the next wave of solar adoption, while still sharing the triple bottom line with the community.

CLEANtricity, Daniel Sullivan
Yes Wind Can

CLEANtricity Power manufactures unique small wind turbines that capture power from wind in breezes to typhoons and generate clean electricity right where you need it. Variable area, vertical axis turbines produce energy in almost all wind conditions and service the distributed power market.

The identified revenue potential for the variable wind turbine is about $3 Billion for the “off-grid homes” market.  There are also about 37M homes in the US with property over 1/2 acre which are also potential product clients. As of 2008, this market was supplied with 10,500 units and the projected growth is approximately 30 fold in 5 years, with tax credits also supporting customer demand. This particular low-wind market is under-served with today’s technologies and CLEANtricity fills that gap in the market.

The product is a unique, patented solution that supports variable swept areas. It uses a design that self regulates its area passively and without the need of electronics. The vertical spin design has the benefit of noise reduction and less vibration making it more reliable and versatile. A normal wind turbine is optimized for a specific speed or range. If a “traditional” wind turbine needs to stop operating when wind conditions reach above category 8 (to prevent damage), then it misses out on the jump between cat 8 to cat 9 window, which offer 8x more energy.  Plus, in order to shut down a traditional turbine, you need to feather the blade or use a mechanical break which does not always work gracefully in high wind conditions. Smaller vertical axis wind turbines are significantly cheaper with no large installation costs and foundations to build.

The go-to-market strategy includes more R&D work to improve the product (such as incorporating a battery that will store power for up to 6 days). The current intellectual property is already protected with patents. CLEANtricity is also working with suppliers to ensure quality control, contracts and unit assembly are production ready. Distribution channels, contracts and training are the next step to scale out the product roll-out. With positive profitability forecasted in 2011, the expected number of units delivered by 2010 will be approximately 70 thousand and gross sales are expected to reach 3.5 Million.