Welcome again to another blog entry for our green tech meeting.

New Meeting Location

You’ve all probably received Kris’s email notifying us we’re moving our meeting to larger forum in a different building. We’re in the ATLAS building (part of the engineering faculty) for the rest of the year.  The auditorium holds 150, the lobby is large, both are well appointed. To get to the ATLAS building, park in the Euclid lot, exit the lot on the east side, and walk north along 18th Street about a hundred yards. Here is a CU map which show both the parking lot and the Atlas building.

Announcements

• Linda from the Boulder Innovation Center - is looking for new team members
• Boulder founders meetup is looking for speakers/members
• Northern Colorado entrepeneur network meeting in Ft.Collins looking for speakers/members
• Stephen Boulter is organizing a Green Product Showcase – 5 day event – before the Democratic National Congress in Denver and is looking for green company’s to host their products

David Stark EverSealed Windows, Inc.
Super-Insulating Vacuum Windows

Energy efficiency is a significant area for green entrepreneurship and  EverSealed Windows has targeted the both commercial and business segment of window construction. Dave indicated the following on energy loss in US buildings

30% of a typical building’s annual energy budget is lost through windows. Since buildings account for 40% of America’s energy consumption, 12% of our energy goes out the windows.

Of that lost energy there is a potential to save 2/3 of it with efficient window designs. The market for insulated glass units (IGU) windows/doors in the U.S. is approximately 15 Bil and there is a handful of vendors that compete with various different approaches.

EverSealed produces a double pane window that is vacuumed-sealed. Known as Vacuum Insulated Glass Unit (VIGU) it has excellent insulation characteristics. The glass insulation acts like a thermos and keeps the contents inside either hot or cold.  In order to make double pane glass hold a vacuum without spacers, EverSeal had to develop technology to bond glass and metal alloys together hermetically and allow for flexing of glass over various temperature ranges. This technology has been tested extensively to ensure the seal will hold over 25 years. For normal windows, 40% lose their seal after 15 years and this is where significant energy loss occurs.

ESW has secured the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as well as the DOE’s two leading facilities for Windows. In the are of R&D, they have collaborated with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO and the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA.

Competitors use techniques  such as inert gas (e.g. argon) and/or coatings with low emissivity (Low E) to help insulate the interior of a home. Alpen Energy Group, has coatings that filter based on light wavelengths. Anderson Windows also  has high performance windows (Low 4E). EverSeal rates their window as a R10, where a norm single pain window is R1. Compared to their competitors their R rating is quite good and EverSeal competes well on the seal/cost variables. With 6 patents EverSeal has a strong position and expects to license their IP to larger manufacturers for a unit royalty.

Jennifer Sullivan – Entegrity Wind Systems Inc
Commercial Scale Wind Turbines

A local Boulder company, Entegrity Wind System, designs, builds and installs wind turbines for commercial businesses to help offset their electrical costs. Their wind turbines are “behind the meter” and distributed energy source located on the business’s property. With local generation, businesses can save the 9 cents per kWh they normally pay to their utility when the wind is available and draw from the utility only when the wind is not available. Their typical customers are business that have big electrical loads, such as a school or water treatment plants that may require 50-80 kw (up to 500kW). They are national leaders in the <500 kW space. Entegrity has a vertically integrated strategy that has been vetted with NREL.

Entegrity sees a considerable growth, especially in states were wind is plentiful Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma and there is less legislative entanglements around wind turbines. They sold 70 units this year and have a significant pipeline of sales. Yet with all the backlog, it will be critical to maintain quality while ramping-up manufacturing to meet demand. Entegrity has 15 years of experience and expects to maintain 30% annual growth through 2020.

In the future, they see Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean as growth areas for wind technology. Along with other wind and solar competitors, Entegrity expects to invest in technology to provide a better value proposition, such as monitoring and demand management. For example, Entegrity has developed an iPhone application to remotely manage some aspects of the wind turbines operations. They are looking at “leasing”" as a line of business . Also since Entegrity manufactures all parts including the blades, they expect to improve their designs and cost margin. Although their design is “in-phase” with the grid they have not built systems that will feed back into the grid.

Stephen Boulter – StudBuster
Interior Wall Metal Stud Recycling

At the beginning of our meeting, while those of us enjoyed some of food and beverages, Stephen had a demonstration of his StudBuster creation running. The studbuster is used to compress steel studs,  typically removed from a building before a demolition or a remodel. It’s value is the dual benefit of cost and energy saving since compressed studs saves trips and the number of dumpsters used for disposal of the material.

In the demolition industry, especially for large industrial buildings with multiple floors, the cost of removing a steel stud is 7-10 times the cost of originally installing it.  Steel studs can be separated from other waste and be recycled. With the compression of the stud, the construction/demolition company will find it faster/cheaper/easier to manage the extracted stud.

Dr. Anthony Catalano – TerraLUX Inc
LED Based Lighting Solutions

TerraLux is a local Boulder company that was incorporated in 2003 and works on technology enabling LED lighting for various applications. A number of company members, including Dr. Catalano worked at NREL facility in Golden, Colorado. Their team has core competencies in the areas of electrical, mechanical, optical and thermal engineering and as well as research around the area of LEDs.  With products both OEMed to other product companies and direct retail sales, TerraLux is building a significant product suite. With significant cadre of experts, innovation with new product lines is also a part of the company’s growth.

TerraLux holds significant IP and has 3 patents and have have had sales and growth shortly after their first year of research and development. They  are working with a number of strategic partners such as industry heavy-weights Arrow and Phillips. Some of TerraLux’s OEM products are in the areas of architectural lighting, medical/dental devices and consumer products such as sewing machine lights.

TerraLux technology is available in commercial products today. They’re most well-know product is the LED replacement lightbulb for MagLite flashlights. They provide light instruments for HVAC/plumbing as well as LED work lights for non-specialists. Their products are available in stores, such as Handy Hardware, Home Hardware and McGukins in Boulder.

With demand for custom work, TerraLux have developed state of the art technology using LEDs. They have engineered lights that can output up to 600 Lumens. LEDs are providing capabilities in lighting that significantly save energy and provide better lifetime characteristics. LEDs are 6-10x more efficient the incandescent. They can last 20-100K hours and compared to incandescent it runs extremely cool (100C) whereas incandescent runs at 700K. Along with the above characteristics and more competitive brightness characteristics LED is starting to grow in market share. Today LED is only 1.1 Bil of a 57.7 Bil industry.

Currently TerraLux is working actively on their strategy for growth and to increase their valuation so that they attractive acquisition target for a large lighting manufacturer. Their future solution porfolio will include work on LED replacements for fluorescent, mecury-vapour and new speciality lighting products for highly volatile environments (e.g. refineries) and medical lightning applications.