Thanks everyone for helping us kickoff 2009 at the Colorado Green Tech Meetup. This month we had a fantastic turnout with over 130 people and standing room only again. We did accommodate people with extra chairs but we’re going to look for another room to expand into.

Announcements

• Hybrids Plus is looking for electrical engineers and a VP of Manufacturing (Contact carl@hybrids-plus.com or see our Job Website )
• CORE will be hosting the Sustainable Opportunity Summit on March 17-19th
• An upcoming Green Festival is being hosted on May 7th at the Denver Convention center. There will be a diverse set of speakers on green technologies including Green Building techniques

Please see our Events calendars for more details

Speakers

Michael Callahan, PowerMundo
PowerMundo – Improving Lives, Conserving Nature

• Rise of the Footsoldier on dvd

Micheal Callahan, a native Boulderite, introduces PowerMundo’s concept: They are an innovative marketing, wholesale distribution, and micro-franchise company that connects people living in poverty to a network of sustainable resources. This idea tackles a hard problem: how do we improve the environmental conditions for people in developing countries in an economically-sustainable way. Michael brought forth an example of Peruvian women cooking on open wood-fires and having “stalactites of soot” on the ceiling of their homes. Their products focus on reducing environmental emission and reduce usage and generation of ground toxins.

• Lucky Number Slevin download

The main product categories that  PowerMundo provides, are: clean water, cooking meals and lighting homes. From the presentation the key principles of this company are the following:

• Make products economically sustainable by including local merchants in the supply chain
• Use micro-finance to help facilitate vendors purchasing power for products
• Select environmental-friendly products from evolving new technology
• Ensure products have an ROI – such as eliminating monthly kerosene purchases

Each one of these pillars has associated challenges. Microfinance alone is a new concept, developed by the Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh. It helps finance small loans for up-front merchandise cost and allows small merchants to make a profit. Another challenge is finding the right products. They have to be cost effective, in many cases they employ newer/advanced technology and the product needs to be environmentally friendly.  A good parallel example of this is the fantastic product design that went into the $100 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) product -  it runs with very low power consumption and stores human gesture power in long-life batteries.

In order to acquire cost-effective/advanced products for the developing world, PowerMundo is partnering with technology centers such as Standford, MIT and CU. They are also scouring the supply chains of the world to match the product to the problem. With about 20 products in their current portfolio, each product fills some niche, like a solar-powered lantern powered by a Li-Ion battery to replace a kerosene lantern. Looking for such a product, I found the following on a Solar Camping Lantern on a Chinese web site.  PowerMundo will sell to the local merchant for $12 dollars (freight not included) and in turn the local merchant will sell for small margin locally. An example of their supply chain costing shows a product sourced at $15, sold to an entrepreneur at $20 and then retailed at $25.

Doing business with clients all over the world includes due-diligence.  There is the branding of products, and in some instances the product is co-branded with the local companies. In many cases, an exclusive contract needs to be signed for product distribution rights.  Product costs need to be fairly low for 2 reasons: 1) micro-financing typically will not cover large outlays for merchants in poverty areas, and 2) to accommodate margins for PowerMundo and their local retailers and be affordable for the end consumers in these developing regions. In some cases, the price can be subsidized with advertising, further helping lower the price.

The current strategy is to examine individual geographical markets and understand the product needs. In Latin American, where 1/3 of Peru’s population does not have electricity, the use of biomasss (wood) for heating is extensive. Powermundo sells energy efficient/solar cookstoves as an alternative to wood. Another example is a competitor Freeplay Energy, that has sold over 1/2 million energy efficient hurricane lamps in India. Their lamp product works with low-power LEDs and captures enough energy from a 60 second “cranking-winding ” to provide 1 hr. of light.

PowerMundo’s model is more of a developing world/eco-friendly Avon. Today Avon Cosmetics has 10Bil. in sales. PowerMundo’s pro-forma has a 5 year horizon where it expects to be selling 1 million product/annually at a 19% margin. Challenges abound when you work globally with price fluctuations, undercapitalization and management of multiple supply chains.  Some of PowerMundo’s competitors are government-funded programs or direct sales from suppliers. In some cases local merchants may have a similar product. The supply chain model and advertising are primary sources of revenue.

This presentation raised many great questions from our group regarding the finance of customers, it seems that educating local loan officers was key. Microloan organizations such as Kiva and Grameen Bank were mentioned as active in this area. Another Microloan company brought up in the discussion was Prisma MicroFinance, that helps provide clean drinking water through purchases of water tanks/filtration systems. Questions on durability and eco-friendly products were brought up. Many products don’t use disposable batteries and work exclusively on human gesture to generate energy (e.g. shaking, cranking) and are stored in the products long-life batteries.  Michael mentioned that products are tested for durability before they are sold, by taking the product to 18,000 ft into the mountain or into the wet/humid depths of the Amazon jungle.

Peter Novak, Sunflower Corporation
Sustainable Natural Lighting

Sunflower Corporation is a pre-revenue start-up, based in Boulder. Their first product is a daylight harvester that targets the commercial market. The main benefits of natural lightning systems are three-fold: 1) Reduce energy by allowing lights to be turned off; 2) Healthier/relaxed environment with natural glare free lights; and 3) Reduce electrical consumption and greenhouse gases.

Their launch product is the Sundolier, which is capable of lightning areas of 1500 sq ft. and works well in retail, schools and offices. The product will fit into an approximately 24″ in. access hole in the ceiling. The light channel will extend outward to a light source, (not necessarily a direct line of sight) on the roof.  This type of product is an improved alternative to existing lighting solutions such as skylights since many sources generate heat and create too much light.

Sundolier light is also a healthier, more relaxed lighting option. When there is enough sunlight, the interior lights can be turned off. In a natural light environment a more relaxed atmosphere is created with reduced glare on everything from pictures to computer monitors. Many studies indicate natural light promotes wellness.  It also helps increase sales in retail stores and improves productivity in schools and at work.  Peter mentioned both Carneige Mellon’s non-energy benefits calculator and Heschong Mahone Group study on natural lighting.  You can also refer to a great scribed article on green building productivity. Some of the productivity benefits are the following:

“Students learn up to 21% faster. People in offices are up to 23% more productive. The improved interior environment created by daylight leads customers to purchase more in retail environments—1-7% sales increases on average, with proven results of up to 40% greater sales for spaces converted from no daylight to the best daylight conditions.”

With the benefit a hybrid solution to lighting, the ROI based on reduced electrical usage is between 1 and 5 years. The cost of the product is $15K, plus $2-5K for larger installations. In the case of large facilities, such as schools the ROI is closer to one year payback. The market is $500mil in 2008 with an expected 10-11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

The current market focus is the education sector. A number of school districts are mandating the LEED certification and natural lighting building requirements. The trend is a greening of the federal market. Sales are driven by the solar map showing where the effective use of natural sunlight is optimal.  Sunflower’s product competes against other categories: LED, fiber optics and architectural solutions.  The competitive advantages are 1) 4-12x reduction in roof penetration compared to traditional skylights; 2) have a active-tracking system to maximize sunlight concentration; 3) the ability to switch in less then 3 secs between natural lighting and electric for a hybrid light install.

The group asked about patents and Sunflower has a number of provisional patents on their optics. Peter also discussed how natural lighting for buildings is also growing in Europe specifically in schools and the improvement in attention deficit disorder (ADD) is one of the benefits being realized for students. In relation to thermal-load, traditional lightning systems usually increase A/C usage by 15%, and this is avoided with natural lighting.

Tim Reese, Lightning Hybrids Inc
100 MPG Hybrid Sports Sedan

God Told Me To

Lightning Hybrids is an automotive research and manufacturing company, headquartered in Loveland, Colorado and founded in October 2008. As pointed out a few times, the founders are mechanical engineers from CSU and not CU! Their blueprint for the car of the future is a diesel hydraulic hybrid sport sedan that can do 0-60mph in 5.9 seconds and has fuel efficiency greater than 100 mpg.

Tim showed the audience a very elegant design in his presentation that was based on a ‘53 Corvette but with some added modern body designs. There were no side mirrors (solved with cameras) and no rear door seam. The whole car opened like a jet canopy – a canopy that extends to the back end of the car and down to the frame.  Check out the website where this is illustrated a little better then my description.

Lightning Hybrids is also competing in the Progressive Automotive X-Prize. There is a lot of great competition (Tim mentioned about 120 entrants).  The design needs to incorporate elements that would allow for mass production, and it needs to be a 4-passenger vehicle.  It would be fantastic to see the prize come to Colorado.  I am sure Lightning Hybrids would also put to good use their $10 Mil. purse winnings.

So how is their car different?  Firstly it’s an extremely light-weight car at 1600lbs which is half the weight of a Prius. It’s body is carbon fiber and chrome-moly. It has a carbon fiber suspension and an aluminum engine.  They have also chosen the biodiesel route, with biodiesel plus type fuel for low-sulfur emissions.  It uses a hydraulic regenerative braking system which is extremely efficient, (hydraulics have 80-95% capture of braking energy versus a typical NiMH type storage in a Prius that captures about 30%).

One of the X-Prize contenders is Tesla. Just to compare, the Tesla Roadster must carry 1000 lbs of batteries to power the engine and has a total weight of 2700 lbs. Also the charging rate for a Tesla is phenomenal, it takes 70amp @ 120V (no wonder it charges so fast!). Tesla has proven the market for electric sports cars. Future orders for Tesla are well over 1200, and they expect $102 Mil. in sales by 2012. Lightning is also expanding into this market with similar forecasts and expects to have positive revenue by its third year. The Lightning model will cost around $59K (for the 4 wheel model).

During the question period, there was interest about the exotic vehicle body makeup. A question was posed whether the vehicle could be repaired and at what cost if there was in an accident. For those who follow Tesla, it was a sad day when the first crash was reported

.  Tim gave some hope here since Carbon Fiber can be repaired and it also had better flex properties to help minimize the damage. As Tim pointed out, the insurance companies are more concerned with hospital bills then automotive repair bills. Tim invited everyone to follow along on their website blog, and see them at the Denver Auto Show on April 1st.  They expect to start prototype manufacturing on January 11th, with early models planned for completion at the Denver Auto Show, and production manufacturing expected to begin in Loveland in 2010.

Rich Barone, Infotility
Coordinating the Smart Grid

Infotility is a software company providing distributed intelligence to generators, distributors and users of electricity. Infotility’s initial product offering – Dynamic Load Shaping – is used to improve both system operations and asset utilization for electric utilities, while integrating renewables and other distributed energy and demand response programs.

Infotility was founded back in 2001 and early on won $7 mil. of Department of Defense grants. The need for secure, monitorable and modern power management was emphasized on Sept 11th, and then demonstrated in the NorthEast blackout of 2003. Their product was developed in cooperation with with two of the nation’s largest Investor Owned Utilities or private utilities.

One of the features embedded in Infotility’s GridAgents platform is the ability to optimize asset utilization, specifically Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs. In many cases, traditional power management is inefficient, but with the need for renewables on both a small and large scale, grid intelligence and monitoring are necessary.  The lack of data integration is also a factor for utilities, since most data is either not in context or missing and without reporting decision support tools – it is difficult for operations staff to make informed decisions.   Indeed the more assets that are included on the grid, including renewables and grid attached vehicles, the greater the need for localized intelligence.

Infotility sees the addressable market currently at $12 Mill for their product. The global smart grid market is growing at 10% annual growth and should reach $60 Bil. by 2011. Since their product is software, they expect to OEM their platform on other vendor hardware. This allows them to be installed in the utility with minimal installation and modifications to the utilities operations.

• The Salton Sea ipod

Some of the software competitors in this market are companies like Gridpoint and Tendril. Some of the larger hardware vendors are also involved ABB, Siemens and GE.  Infotility expects to partner with the larger companies as pure-play solution which works and interacts with existing hardware. Their competitive advantage is their software platform has distributed intelligence and data filtering on a revolutionary scale. They also employ unique optimized and localized decision algorithms to respond faster with more complex decisioning rules. Along with plans to manage IP addressable units, they expect to take a “smart-tag” approach and manage large-scale number of devices (such as meters).

A go-to-market strategy involves a pilot with larger vendors such as Con-Ed and PG&E. By 2012 their pro-forma indicates $84 Mil in revenue. They are also working with demand response centers to help support real-time management of distributions centers. Their strategy also supports Microgrid-based demand management on a number of scales from data centers to net-zero/smart community initiatives.