Smart Grid Investment Bubble

September 16, 2009

Venture capitalists are all getting on the same train again. This time, it’s the smart grid express.

Ask a VC where today’s big clean-tech investment opportunity is and the answer is likely to be “smart grid” – short hand for notion that the creaky old power grid can be updated with technologies to permit greater control, stability, monitoring and conservation.

VCs see copycat companies being created

VCs see copycat companies being created

Tens of billions of dollars of grid spending will take place over the next few years. Some researchers estimate the U.S. market could reach $100 billion a year in two decades.

Venture capitalists are eager to profit. Unfortunately, their excitement is swamping startups with cash, even as overall venture investing shrinks because of the downturn. Some of the dollars are creating copycat companies, raising the level of competition that each will face.

Now the dreaded word “bubble” is starting to be heard. This turned out to be particularly true at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference Wednesday in Sausalito.

The prospect of over investing could spell trouble for unsuspecting entrepreneurs determined to capitalize on the market opportunities. Already the list of startups is long, with names such as Tendril, BPL Global, Enerwise, SmartSynch, Silver Spring Networks, eMeter, Itron and Eka Systems.

But that isn’t the end of the challenges. What should scare startup CEOs the most is that the big money is drawing all sorts of giants, Siemens, Cisco, General Electric and IBM, to name a few. Just this morning IBM added more software to its product arsenal, a program called Solution Architecture for Energy and Utilities Framework, or SAFE.

For many young companies, the prospect of too much competition is anything but safe. In fact, as one VC put it, it is time to look for protected market niches.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Mobile Solar Hot Spots – What Will They Think Of Next

September 16, 2009

I’m not sure what flowers have to do with the Prius.

The hot spots reportedly get on average 70 percent of their power from the sun

The hot spots reportedly get on average 70 percent of their power from the sun

But for some reason, Toyota decided to promote its popular hybrid this summer with solar powered Wi-Fi hot spots that it hauled around the country.

The hot spots are 18-feet tall, free for use and look like daisies (along with other flowers).

These tallboys have finally arrived in San Francisco and will remain planted in the Yerba Buena gardens until Sept. 27. If you stop by, please let me know if they work.

Toyota says on average they generate 70 percent of their power from the sun.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

12 Hot Lighting And Green Buildings Startups

September 16, 2009

The next generation lighting and green buildings markets are huge.

Here are 12 hot startups hoping to mine the space.

They come from the Cleantech 100 list of privately held companies. The list, with 55 startups from the United States, 13 from the United Kingdom, 10 from Germany, five are from Israel and three from India, is meant to identify companies with the potential to grow rapidly. No Chinese companies made the cut.

Here are three companies developing high efficiency lighting:

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Fisker To Unveil $39,000 Plug In Hybrid

September 15, 2009

Electric car manufacturer Fisker will unveil a $39,000 plug-in hybrid within the next couple weeks.

The Fisker Karma will have a sibling - with a production run of 100,000 or so units

The Fisker Karma will have a sibling - with a production run of 100,000 or so units

The follow on to the $87,900 Fisker Karma is expected to be built in larger volumes – at a production run of 100,000 or so vehicles, said Ray Lane, a managing partner at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Lane let the news slip at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito. He said the announcement is expected this week or next.

Kleiner Perkins is an investor in Fisker, which has raised about $100 million since its founding in 2007. The Irvine company competes with high-end electric car makers, such as Tesla.

The new car will be designed to be more accessible than the Karma, but, says Lane, “who would not want to buy a Fisker Karma, if you could afford it.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Biofuels Will Be Cheaper Than Oil In Three Years Says Khosla

September 15, 2009

Move aside you makers of plug in hybrids and battery-constrained electric cars.

The internal combustion engine has lots of life in it and the prospect of inexpensive biofuel is just around the corner, says clean-tech investor Vinod Khosla.

Khosla has made waves by shrugging off the popular belief that electric vehicles and hybrids will be the panacea to global warming. It’s not that he dismisses their role, just the size of it. The efficiency of the internal combustion can be greatly improved, and if that efficiency is doubled, carbon output falls by 50 percent – a far larger contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases than the 25 percent mileage improvement of hybrids.

Internal combustion engines can be made sharply more efficient and may still be the path to the future, says Vinod Khosla

Internal combustion engines can be made sharply more efficient and may still be the path to the future, says Vinod Khosla

And when biofuels become competitive…well that’s more icing on the cake. Khosla said Tuesday that he is almost certain biofuels will be cheaper than oil in three years.

That will have a dramatic impact on consumer habits.

Millions of Indians are destine to drive the $2,500 Tata Nano, not the $25,000 Honda Civic hybrid, he points out. So without upending the industry with the task of building a new infrastructure of electric charging stations, big improvements in the fight again global warming are possible.

In the next two to threes years, the technologies for harvesting as many as a half dozen bioluels will be proven, he predicted during an appearance at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito. The real question will be who will risk the funds to scale up production.

Khosla said his calculations assume oil will fall to about $30 barrel in order to compete with biofuel. And he threw one bone to the hybrid people. Hydraulic hybrids for heavy trucks and machinery – now there is a technology he likes.

One hundred percent improvements in mileage are possible, he said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

US Is World’s Leading Biofuels Producer And Consumer

September 15, 2009

Biofuels are not the perfect solution to global warming.

The plants and algae used to make biofuels typically consume large amounts of water and in some cases as much energy as is contained in the fuel itself. Ethanol is one example of this energy imbalance.

Nonetheless, the U.S. is the world’s largest producer and consumer of biofuels and there is little indication the role they play in cutting greenhouse gases will end any time soon.

The biofuels market should grow to $170 billion by 2014, says SBI

The biofuels market should grow to $170 billion by 2014, says SBI

According to SBI, biofuels account for 10 percent of the U.S.’s renewable energy generation, and they will rise to 12.5 percent in five years.  This equates to a $103 billion worldwide market place today growing to $170 billion by 2014.

Helping to spark demand is the federal government’s decision to push biofuel use in the military.

Of course, China and India are the fastest growing manufacturing regions, suggesting that competition will get more fierce as the years wear on. That is likely to put pricing under severe pressure, making it harder for American growers and producers.

But then, what else is new? Be sure to keep those cars and subsidies coming.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Despite AltaRock, Washington State Utility Sees Great Promise In Geothermal

September 15, 2009

AltaRock has taken some of the steam out of geothermal exploration.

The notion that heat deep below the earth’s surface can boil water, produce steam and turn turbines to generate electricity received a blow early this month. AltaRock stopped drilling at a northern California site after it failed to pierce a layer of rock about 4,000 feet below the surface.

Snohonish County PUD hopes for up to 100MW of geothermal energy in the next 10 to 15 years

Snohonish County PUD hopes for up to 100MW of geothermal energy in the next 10 to 15 years

Fears of earthquakes also helped undermine the high-profile initiative, which is backed by the venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google and the Energy Department.

But that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of Craig Collar, a senior manager of energy resource development at Snohomish County PUD, a Washington state utility.

Collar says he sees tremendous potential in geothermal energy, and Snohomish hopes to tap it. The utility plans to drill “temperature wells” a couple thousand feet into the earth’s surface next summer to test underground temperatures. The drilling will take place in the Cascade foothills just north of Seattle. Deeper exploratory wells will follow in the summer of 2011.

The goal is to generate between 90 MW and 100 MW of electricity from geothermal over the next 10 to 15 years, says Collar. “That’s kind of what we’re shooting for.”

The AltaRock project may temporarily slow development at some sites in the U.S. But geothermal exploration will go on, just as it has in places such as Iceland, where thermal energy is available to tap.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Better Place Promises 200,000 Electric Cars By 2016 And A Software Platform For Apps

September 15, 2009

Better Place and Renault will put 200,000 electric cars on the roads of Denmark and Israel by 2016 as the two companies promote their battery-swapping alternative to the internal combustion engine.

In a press announcement, the companies said they plan to build at least 100,000 vehicles for each country – two of the nations installing networks of Better Place recharging stations and battery switching centers.

Better Place strikes deals with Microsoft, Intel and Flextronics, which will build charging stations

Better Place strikes deals with Microsoft, Intel and Flextronics, which will build charging stations

The United States and Japan are also on the Better Place hit list as the company tries to convince consumer that an electric car with an easily replaced battery will satisfy short- and long-distance driving needs.

The building plans were among a series of announcements Better Place made at the start of this week’s Frankfurt Motor Show.

Among the developments was the news that Renault unveiled the first switchable battery for use in Israel and Denmark in addition to a five-seat electric sedan designed for 2011 delivery in Denmark and Israel.

Better Place also said it struck a deal with Flextronics. The contract manufacturer will build 1,000 charging stations to be field-tested and scale up produce to 100,000 stations for deployment by 2011. Better Place is presently testing almost 800 charging spots in Israel.

In a second partnership, Better Place said it agreed to work with the Israeli R&D arms of Intel and Microsoft to develop an in-car computing platform. The platform will include an embedded version of Microsoft’s Windows and Intel’s Atom chip.

The platform, when completed, will support Better Place’s in-car software – AutOS – which the company showed publicly for the first time. AutOS keeps track of a car’s energy use and be open enough, Better Place said, that developers will be able to write applications to run on it, much as they do for Apple’s iPhone.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

RoseStreet Claims Hydrogen Breakthrough With Thin Film Solar Cell

September 14, 2009

RoseStreet Labs Energy claims a hydrogen milestone: the ability to generate hydrogen gas from sunlight using solar cells and no external energy.

The company claims to use no external power, but refuses to offer any details on achievement

The company claims to use no external power, but refuses to offer any details on achievement

The Phoenix company offered little detail about its achievement or the volume of hydrogen gas it observed. And two officials at Rosestreet, when contacted, declined to elaborate.

Nonetheless, if true, the development could be promising since up to now generating hydrogen has consumed significant energy. In a press release the company said the hydrogen was generated without external power or the use of petroleum products, such as natural gas.

Rosestreet said its thin-film cells, based primarily on nitride technology, are expected to begin commercial field trials in 2010 and achieve 25 percent or greater efficiencies. Still, its pace of development has been slow.

The company licensed photovoltaic technology from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Cornell University in 2005 and vowed then the technology could achieve astronomical efficiency above 48 percent. A year earlier, it had purchased a wafer bumping plant from Kulicke and Soffa Industries.

While the prospect of generating hydrogen without an external power source is exciting, Rosestreet’s unwillingness to discuss the accomplishment even at a high level is suspicious. Perhaps this message on the company Web site best explains its goals: Rosestreet is seeking investment funding.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Five Hot Startups In Battery Technology

September 14, 2009

Battery and fuel-cell technology is hot. Here are eight companies in the space worth a second look.

The companies are singled out on the Cleantech 100 list of privately held startus with the potential to grow rapidly. Last week, we published more than a score of firms selected in the solar energy, biofuels and wind energy businesses.

Tomorrow we will publish the names of several in the alternative lighting and building efficiency markets.

But not to get ahead of ourselves. Here are five firms working on advanced batteries. Four are from the United States and one is based in Europe:

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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