Well 2008 has been another a great year for Green Tech in Colorado. Just this year we’ve heard significant state-wide announcements from Range Biofuels landing investment and Vestas Wind creating new jobs. We also heard about NREL expansion plans and the announcement of Conoco/Phillip’s alternative energy learning center. Beyond energy development, which Colorado is more know for, we’re seeing green transportation, demand management,  new battery development/integration, smart grids , energy efficiency companies and investments.

The meetup also had an impressive inaugural year.  Since March we’ve had over 30 speakers/companies present and we’ve seen our meetup grow to 750 members. We’ve also grown to 80 members on LinkedIn.

With all the various contributions from across the state and here in Denver/Boulder, we’re looking forward to a  fantastic 2009. We’re going to build on this year’s successes and lift Colorado to the #1 Green Tech Center of Excellence for the country.

A final note – you all heard last time we met, we are not going to have a December meeting. So from Kris and Kevin, see you all Jan 8th and enjoy all the holidays!

Announcements

I want to mention a terrific interview Kris did for KGNU that was broadcast on Thanksgiving day. To listen to the interview,

1. select the above link and choose Thursday Nov 27th.
2. Find the Morning Magazine entry
3. Right-click on the download icon (green arrow and hard-drive) its on the right side of box
4. Player pops up(quick-time), seek to 16:40 in the program to hear or scan to about 1/3 of progress bar.

Our website is also expanding, Kris made mention of the new Job board which is online and the Investor Avenue section on the main page displaying links Investors seeking Companies and Companies seeking Investors. Another mention that site is entrepreneur-friendly and posting there will not result in a loss of the SEC 504D exemption for a start-up looking for capital.

• Mark Wheller briefly mentioned the Angel Capital Summit which took place on Nov 21st
• We had a “Zero Waste” meeting by using Corn-based (PLA) cups and other compostables. Thanks Karen Ellis and Shawn LeMons and Eco-Cycle!
• NREL is looking for atmospheric scientists
• The Institute for Ecolonomics, started by the late Dennis Weaver, also called out for support and has opened a new Loveland office. Please contact Wayne Dorband (wayne@ecolonomics.org) for more information.

Speakers

Guy Babbit,  CZero Solutions
Hydraulic Hybrid Retrofits

Another elegant and specialized approach to build hybrid solutions for heavy duty trucks is using hydraulic compression. CZero is a 20 year old company that has extensive knowledge in automotive hydraulics. They are experts in designing regenerative braking systems to store energy and help reduce fuel usage by as much as 20-30%.

The business benefits of hydraulic large trucks is multiple. Firstly to note, nitrogen based hydraulic can store significantly more energy then the traditional passenger hybrid vehicles. Savings come in the form of less vehicle maintenance (with less brake wear), fuel efficiency savings and extended vehicle usage at night (using electric sources). CZero works mainly with retro-fits and sees energy recovery as much as 75% for their regenerative breaking system.  With this technology, new engines can be designed smaller with energy from the hydraulic system filling the gap for energy demand.

Using hydraulics, both parallel and series configuration are possible although parallel configuration retrofits offer lower cost. Historically hydraulic hybrids date back to 1907, although it were no true commercial options until the 1950’s. Today one of the competitors for this technology is Peterbilt. The Peterbilt 320 employs an Eaton Hydraulic Launch Assist solution.

CZero sees a large market in hydraulic hybrids based on it quick return on investment and it is relatively easy conversion/retrofit process. It is investing in and marketing to developing nations. Their solution fits in well with the economic requirements of countries like India and China who are looking for large truck solutions that are cost effective. Hydraulic hybrids are cheaper then electric hybrids and their large energy storage capabilities are a good fit for the heavy-duty truck segment. There are number of vehicle applications such as power company fleet vehicles and waste-management fleets that have short duty-cycle applications.

Research and new products are a key focus. New ideas and technologies are being tested as prototypes at the CSU Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratories. At Colorado State, CZero is also extending their international reach with the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program. New prototypes promise lighter systems and easier retro-fit capabilities. Additionally, noise for hydraulics systems have been greatly improved.  This new technology research has been recognized by the state government with a grant from the Governor’s Energy Office.

Russel Thomas, Thomas Engine Company
The Variable Compression Ratio Internal Combustion Engine

Russel has brought a timely technology to help our automotive industry build more fuel efficient cars with an engine-only technology replacement. The current offering by Thomas Engine is technology licensing of their variable compression engine. With this engine design, a high compression engine mode is used to help improve fuel efficiency up to (20-30%) for spark-based engines.

The engine’s core distinction is the use of a special designed hydraulic ring that works like a crankshaft. The engine can vary it’s compression ratio from 7.2:1 to 15:1. The solution does not involve a timing chain or belt.  The design has been tested at high levels of stress and has a comparable manufacturing cost to a regular engine. It also it slightly small and lighter then an existing V6 engine.

Thomas Engine has spent over 1 million on patents with 8 awarded US patents and 13 pending patents with additional foreign patents. For those who want to see a previous article on this technology, refer to my early article.

Jeff Granato, Proterra LLC
Cost-effective solutions for Clean Transportation

Proterra provides green and cost-saving solutions for mass-transit. Based in Golden, they tackle the whole spectrum of mass transit vehicle needs. There product line is ground-up solutions for hybrid-electric, plug-in electric and battery-electric buses.  So what does the product line cover? A host of technologies are offered: a uniquely developed Lithium battery system for buses, an entire composite body design for weight and aerodynamic efficiency, charging station systems, regenerative breaking solutions and electric drive trains.

Traditional competitors are diesel buses and the Proterra solution provides a significant value proposition when compared to diesels.  Their Battery-hybrid delivers greater than 2 times the fuel economy of conventional diesel and their battery-electric does 4 times that. The savings over a lifetime is 1.90 per gallon of diesel fuel. The ROI of a new Proterra bus is 7 yrs. for pure electric and 9 yrs. on a diesel hybrid over a conventional diesel bus. The Proterra designed buses have significant lifespans and add significant savings after their payback period. Proterra does offer leasing options as well.

The battery systems are designed specifically for buses and their usage patterns. As one can see in traditional bus routes through the city, their duty cycle involves a lot of rapid stop-start driving. The new battery is design to be ultra-safe with operational temperatures that are not hot to touch. They are encased so the they can’t be punctured and are encased in heat resistant packaging. The whole battery system is mounted on the under the frame of the bus. The battery system is designed for a 15yr lifespan at 85% usable state of charge. With electric drive the maintenance is also significantly less then for a diesel bus.

The charging system is also a significant leap forward. The Terravolt system is a rapid recharge system allowing a bus to fully charge in 10 minutes. The Terravolt system can be installed along a bus route. This system facilitates buses to always stay on route and not have to go out of service to recharge at a maintenance station. A regular battery charge will last about 90 minutes for regular usage.

A unique regenerative breaking system has been incorporated in the bus design. This is a series configuration that allows for 200-400% improved fuel economy.  A significant advantage with Lithium fast charging batteries, is that 92% of the regenerative power can be captured when braking. We can look forward to some of this technology in regular passenger vehicles in the coming years from the big automakers.

The bus frame is also a technology breakthrough. The entire frame is made with composite materials and is 10, 000 lbs less then a regular diesel bus (a 20-40% savings). Additionally frames are designed to be aerodynamic. The frame also has excellent crash ratings and the results measured exceed that of steel frames. The buses have been extensively tested at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute in Altoona, Pennsylvania

The market is around 14 Billion and growing for this sector. Proterra has achieved significant support from US Federal and State agencies to help promote and financially support their products. Some of the competitors in this space are NovaBus from Sweden and the local Nabi (NorthAmerican Bus Industries)

Jeff took a few question at the end of the session. Their strategy also looked at hydrogen buses but the cost of hydrogen and the safety issues made this option too prohibitive. Their batteries are also based on the Lithium-Titanate technology.

Tim Feaver, Porous Power Technologies
Improving performance and reducing cost of any lithium-ion battery

In the world of batteries, performance and safety is king. Porous Power has keyed into a unique competitive area in this field with their Symemtrix ultraporous polymer material, the separator between electrodes in a Lithium Ion battery. Essentially the better the porosity, the less resistance to energy flow, especially at high discharge rates.

Tim had some pretty significant claims on performance and the data to back it up. He displayed a slide with porosity versus cost and showed the significant advantage the Symmetrix system had over its competitors. In this field, companies such as Celgard and AMS Membranes are also developing similar technology related to membrane porosity. The value proposition of Porous Power is their performance:  4x more capacity, 3x more EV cycles and 3x more sustained voltage then regular Li-Ion cells.  Their technology won the 2005 Advanced Energy Storage Technology Innovation of the Year award and the company won the DoE’s 2008 Clean Energy Entrepreneur of the Year.

Symmetrix layers are “laminatable” to the electrodes and  is twice as porous as normal Li-Ion membranes. The Symmetrix system improves performance in a number of areas including: 1) Increases the number of cycles 2) Improves its safety under abusive conditions 3) Lowers the batteries temperature band 4) Shortens its charging period 5) Lowers cost of operation.

The target product line is aimed at larger and “faster” (high discharge rate) cells. The transportation sector is a good fit and the new generation of PHEVs would employ this technology.  Currently the potential market is 1.1Bil for Li-Ion and currently the hybrid car market accounts for only 3% of vehicles. The future forecast is to have 25% PHEV (plug-in) vehicles in which 1.6 Billion, would use the separator.

Porous Power is already in production with Li-Ion batteries and is has work lines running that manufacture 15K cells/shift. The also have facility to produce coatings and laminates. New product development is targeting areospace and small cell batteries (e.g. MP3 player) as good growth markets.

For all of those who heard about the Green Frontier Fest at our August meeting – it was great fun. I hope that a number of you got a chance to visit. It was held as part of the DNC convention in front of the Center for Performing arts on August 24th.   We came across a number of previous presenters and members of Colorado Green tech at the event. I’ve included some of the pictures below.

Hybrids plus had a vehicle parked on the curve for people to see. A number of these cars were available for test drives. Hybrids plus presented at our August Meeting.

Tom McKinnon and the Electro-ride scooter seen below were providing test drives. Boulder Electro-Ride also brought their scooter to our last month’s meeting. Kris  being an experienced motorcyclist managed the controls with ease.

Dan Friedlander had a booth with a lot of information on electric cars. He arranged for a number of electric vehicles to be available including vehicle2grid and pure-electric plug-in vehicles including the Tesla below. So for the fans of the Tesla roadster you know the stats are very impressive. It has a 3.9sec 0-60mph acceleration and runs on Li-Ion batteries that can run for 220 miles per charge. So I checked one off my list when I got to take a ride in this car!

Vestas also had a terrific display with an enormous wind turbine blade on a specially rigged 18-wheeler. They are one of the largest green-tech employers in Colorado.

Also there was a trailer full of information on the SmartGrid – SmartCity. Sunil Cherien from Spirae presented to the Green tech group in June on power management and smart-grid technology.

Welcome again to our latest meeting for Green Tech. I hope you all enjoyed our new location and found appropriate parking. By the time the meeting ended I believe it the parking booth was closed giving us free parking for our time in the Atlas Engineering building .

General Announcements

Firstly with the good work Kris has done recruiting sponsors,  we are happy to officially introduce our new sponsor GreenSpark Ventures that specializes specifically in the Cleantech industry.  Kris also mentioned our visit to the Nanotech Summit, see my previous post for details. Fall classes are starting soon and the networking portion of our meeting will go from 6pm to 7pm.

Group Announcements

• Cameron Brooks from Cleantech for Obama is looking for people interested in (1) attending events and (2) helping to organize events. You may contact him at his email or phone (303) 957-7667
• One of this month’s presenters Boulder ElectroRide will be at the Green Frontier Fest being held at the Democratic Convention Sunday Aug 24th
• Green Door Events,  this coming Sunday will be at the Peak Event Center, see the DNC WebSite for more information. Location: 15th and California – Denver, Across from the Hyatt Hotel and one block north of the Convention Center
• LINK, a Denver product design and development firm, is seeking interested parties in support of a educational recycling station designated for schools. Contact Mark Hanchak for more information
• Corey Cox is a Biochemist looking for work in Bio-fuels development. Contact at (303)242-6805

Presenters

Mark Kostovny, Solar Village
Trends in Zero Energy Residential Building

Solar village is a 4 yr old company that has been involved in green home construction in the Colorado area. They specializes in Zero Energy Homes or homes that use zero energy over the year. Some of their recent projects are Prospect, Longmont,  Redwood in Boulder and Maple in Ft. Collins.  They specialize in designing and building homes that minimizing energy usage through green building techniques and drawing energy from renewals.

Construction uses optimized south glass, super insulated walls (isolene spray foam) and passive heating and cooling techniques with desirable thermal mass (to slow heat to the interior) to minimize energy usage. Homes are outfitted with high efficiency hvac systems, lighting and appliances. Also active solar is used to generate power, hot water and hot air.  Heating comes from both radiant floor heat and also heat pumps. Care has been taken to include healthier materials in the home that will not out-gas harmful chemicals such as “low/no VOC” carpets and MDF chipboard.

Solar village has a commercial strategy to scale with turnkey homes. They have optimized a number of components to snap together to reduce construction time and cost. They can build turnkey homes in 2-4 months.  Solar Village has partnered with All American Homes to deliver their homes all over the country.

Tom McKinnon, Boulder ElectroRide Spark a revolution!
Spark the first electric motorcycle of its kind

Wow, really impressed with the look of this bike and Tom! We know Tom works on many projects including his work on cellulosic ethanol. This Boulder Company was founded by four local entrepreneurs, Tom McKinnon, Ned Riedel, Dev Bhatia, and the ride’s creator, Blair Keller.  This product is targeted at the consumer that would do a work commute on an electro-scooter with an stylish “easy-rider” design. The bike has a range of 40 miles per charge,  a top speed of 45 mph and great acceleration. They do not have a final price point yet but expect it be somewhere in the low 3K range.

So how much cheaper is an electric scooter? How about 2.3 cents/mile which is pretty significant if you’re looking a cost effective transportation. Electrical power is not necessarily a clean source, but when you include production, transportation and exhaust from gasoline this puts regular cars at 400g CO2/mile driven and the scooter output at 35g CO2/mile. So we have a very environment friendly transportation alternative here.  The team looked at a number of battery technologies for their design and decided on Lithium-Ion for its better maintenance and performance characteristics. They also put a significant amount of technology and brains into their power management system to support Li-Ion.

There are other competitors in this market, two similar ones are  Zapino (a chinese bike costing around 3K using lead-acid batteries) and Vectix (costing 11K and uses a NiMH batteries). All range of bike categories can also present alternatives to the Electro Scooter, such as old-fashioned pedal bikes, electric/gas assist bikes and full electric bikes.

ElectroRide is starting to take pre-order in Aug 2008 for their model Spark M2.  They are based on a cro-moly frame today and will move from chain to belt drive in the future. The bike does qualify as a scooter for DMV’s purposes. More improvements in the bike design should also make it significantly lighter perhaps in low 100’s). For all wanting to learn more about the bike there is an event schedule on their website.

Carl Lawrence, Hybrids Plus, Inc.
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Carl is somewhat of a quiet legend in Denver-Boulder in the area of hybrid motors. He’s responsible for one of the most early high profile green transportation solutions known as the “Columbine bus“. Found on the 16th st Mall in Denver, these bus are fueled with natural gas (powering an electric motor). They cut emissions by 80% when compared to the old diesel buses the mall used and were put into service in 2000!

Hybrids-plus is well know in Boulder for converting regular hybrid electric vehicles (Ford Escape, Prius) to plug-in hybrids (PHEV). Why do this? You can convert a 50mpg Prius to a 100mpg Prius by replacing the battery pack to a highly efficient battery system. The original batteries are typically NiMH and are converted to a stronger Lithium-Ion battery pack. From the website:

For example, a stock Toyota Prius is an HEV-2, meaning that its battery holds enough energy for about 2 miles. A Hybrids Plus Prius conversion is a PHEV-30, meaning that its battery holds enough energy for about 30 miles.

Currently Hybrids Plus are building the next generation of plug-in hybrid hardware that facilitate vehicle2grid (V2G) enabled vehicles.  V2G Vehicles are active participants in the new SmartGrid envisioned by Xcel Energy and PG&E energy utilities. There are two solutions that Hybrids-Plus offer:

1. Smart Charge (when charging, draws from the grid during non-peak times)
2. V2G Inverger which allows the car to supply power back to the grid.

This new type of smart system needs a connection (done through the phone network) to communicate to/from the power company. Maybe they may consider also using the fiber-optic network going into the SmartGrid homes in Boulder?

So why do this? The details are still being worked out but Carl mentions the utility may incentivize car owners by selling them cheap-rate electricity to charge their car and then allow the owner to sell back to the grid at a premium. We know of two-tier power rates in multiple states such as California, so this rate offering is very plausible . The V2G system will be programmable,  allowing a user to set the battery discharge level to some minimum (e.g. Don’t discharge my battery more than 60%). The benefit of having millions of cars plugged into the grid (as storage devices) is that power can be drawn during peak times and cities/states can reduce the need to build new power plants for peak demand. In relation to charge time, and feed back to the grid, hybrids plus indicates for vehicles with invergers:

Such vehicles will charge rapidly at 220 Vac, and be able to return energy back to the power company in minutes on those rare occasions when the power company suddenly needs extra energy.

Today there is battery competition from a123 and Johnson Controls. The current business strategy is high margin /low volume but the future product lines are meant to be integrated with major manufacturers. Also partnerships with the energy utilities will help take the product lines to higher volume. Future partnerships will include to OEM the battery system to a first tier supplier. Carl expects all vehicles in 10-20 yrs to have electric drive (expecting to hit 42 million by 2012). With the adoption of hybrids today, this is a great time to be an early stage innovator in this space.

Bill Matvichuk, Trulite Inc.
Portable hydrogen Fuel Cell

Trulite designs and builds portable fuel cell power systems. They also offer custom off-grid wind solutions. Products range from individual Polymer Electrolyte Member (PEM) fuel cells to 150 w portable power generators to cost-effective SolarPanel/Fuel cell hybrid generators. A number of applications exists, but the themes are remote power and portable power that is a clean alternative.

From TruLite’s website:

HydroCells are based on a chemical hydride known as Sodium Borohydride. Instead of compressing or liquefying hydrogen, hydrogen molecules are chemically attached to other elements to create what is called a compound. This compound can then be stored without pressure for long periods of time. When hydrogen is needed the compound is reacted and hydrogen is then released as a gas. This method of storing hydrogen is currently the lightest hydrogen storage technology available.

Currently the latest power supply product is the KH4 which is 23lbs and can supply 5hrs @ 150W per HydroCell canister. It currently supports 2 canisters.

Bill had some great stories from the field. The department of defense felt the batteries could power remote electronics along the border areas. Also applications for FBI “silent watches”, such as a telecommunication van,  that need power without using a noisy vehicle motor.  Marine batteries are another great application since a boat can use 100lbs of lead-acid batteries. Weight is reduced dramatically with PEM batteries while eliminating the lead-acid toxic fumes that vent. Hydrogen cells have a water as a by-product and the water is recycled internally.

As we are now on the eve of the Democratic National Congress, we learnt that Trulite will be providing portable power for laptops. ClearChannel wil also be using it for portal power for their mobile cameras! Trulite has a number of strategic partners including Motorola, BK radio and our continually looking to expand with new partners and applications. They see the market around 2.3 Bill and are well positioned to expand into this market.