July 24th, 2008
The little wind turbines that could
I have to admit, I’m more used to reading about U.S. tech firms expanding abroad rather than the reverse. But in the case of certain green tech innovations, I suppose it makes sense to flip this idea on its head.
Just heard about the example of Proven Energy, which is a Scottish developer of wind turbines in the 2.5-kilowatt, 6-kilowatt and 15-kilowatt range. After seven years of developing a presence in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, the company is taking steps to develop a dealer and installer network in the United States.
(This photo, courtesy of Proven Energy, shows a 15-kilowatt turbine.)
Proven Energy is, indeed, proven: It has deployed more than 1,700 turbines in locations from Saudi Arabia to Antarctica. According to the American Wind Energy Association estimates that about 6,807 small wind turbines were sold in the United States in all of 2006; the association projects 14 percent to 25 percent in sales growth annually.
Here are stats on how much energy these Proven Energy turbines are capable of producing under wind conditions of about 12 miles per hour:
- 6-kilowatt turbine – 1,000 kilowatt hours per month
- 2.5-kilowatt turbine – 350 kilowatt hours per month
- 15-kilowatt turbine – 3,000 kilowatt hours per month
July 23rd, 2008
Accenture gets deeper into the green IT services game
Need some outside perspective on the green status of your IT infrastructure? Accenture, which is one of Forrester Research’s darlings when it comes to green IT services, has created a set of services called the Accenture Green Technology Suite that handle anything from basic green “maturity” assessments and modeling tools to managing corporate carbon footprints. Here’s a breakdown of what it’s offering:
- Accenture Green Maturity Model, which includes 300 questions focused on determining a company’s standing with respect to working practices and office environment, data center operations, procurement policy and corporate citizenship related to managing carbon footprint. The answers to these questions will yield a scorecard that is used to benchmark companies against their industry peers. More information is at this link: www.accenture.com/gmm.
- The Data Center Estimator is used for energy reduction strategies related to cooling, power distribution and IT infrastructure power requirements. Aside from actual numbers for each company, it can be used to investigate various scenarios for change.
- The Workplace Estimator looks at how a company’s individual employees can have an impact through power management, technology recycling, travel policy changes and so forth.
If you’re specifically focused on data center management, you should consider the new Data Center Energy Forecast Report from Accenture and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. The report includes specific, comparative case studies of energy savings projects that were made possible by technology already in existence. Might include some ideas for your own team. Here’s that report.
July 23rd, 2008
Super-duper green computers
If you think about sheer performance-per-watt potential, it’s pretty hard to beat a supercomputer. So any company with gargantuan transaction processing needs might want to scout the latest Green500 list for insight.
This list was brought to my attention by SGI, which has 11 entries in the top 100 greenest systems: all of SGI’s entries are SGI Altix ICE models, those of the water-cooled door design that I wrote about a couple of months ago. SGI claims that the ICE supercomputers are, on average, 32.8 percent more energy-efficient than the typical system listed on the Green500 list. Altix ICE is designed to remove up to 95 percent of the heat created by the computer.
Among the installations for which it was recognized are Total Exploration Production, New Mexico Computer Applications Center and NASA Ames Research Center.
IBM actually is the maker of the top-ranked system on the Green500. In fact, it looks as if it’s the maker of ALL of the top 10, which is a pretty big achievement.
July 22nd, 2008
Mayor: Cleantech leaders are finding their way to San Jose
The great thing about visiting my brother and his family in San Jose is that there is almost always a business reason for me to be here. I used my latest trip (ending tomorrow) to catch up with the mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, about his city’s aggressive green tech agenda.
I first blogged about San Jose’s strategy last November in my “Where’s the greenest city of them all post?” San Jose has crafted a 10-point Green Vision spanning the next 15 years that is that you can read at this Web site link. Here are those points summarized:
1. Create 25,000 cleantech jobs.
2. Reduce per capita energy use by 50 percent.
3. Receive 100 percent of electrical power from clean renewable sources. (Note to Mayor Reed: Former Vice President Al Gore would like you to do this more quickly.)
4. Build or retrofit 50 million square feet of green buildings.
5. Divert 100 percent of waste from landfill and convert it to energy.
6. Recycle or beneficially reuse 100 percent of wastewater (100 million gallons per day).
7. Adopt general plan for sustainable development.
8. Ensure 100 percent of public fleet runs on alternative fuels.
9. Plant 100,000 new trees and replace all streetlights with zero-emission lighting.
10. Create 100 interconnected miles of trials. (San Jose is an awfully sprawling city.)
Here are some points of progress that I discussed with Mayor Reed:
- San Jose is now the site of the country’s largest solar testing and certification facility, run by Underwriters Laboratories. This makes San Jose an even more attractive headquarters location for solar technology companies, since it’s easier for them to tweak product designs, according to Mayor Reed. Significant solar technology players that have chosen sites in San Jose include SVTC, SunPower and NanoSolar. “There are real companies here doing real things,” Mayor Reed says. One black cloud looming over the San Jose solar industry, however, is the scheduled expiration later this year of incentives related to alternative energy development. Here’s one recent story about the current situation.
Personal observation: Ironically, I spent the day before my interview listening to my brother attempt to negotiate a deal with a local solar installer. San Jose has announced an aggressive incentive program of its own to encourage 100,000 solar rooftops through leasing arrangements with local homeowners. No money down, just a monthly payment. The challenge is that his particular roof isn’t conducive to the installation, so he faces a roof job before he can embrace this approach. So, this won’t necessarily be as easy as it looks.
Other key milestones for the city of San Jose:
- Its Environmental Business Cluster area won a national award for its work in helping new technology companies.
- A big local employer, eBay, has opened a gold rated building under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
- Local solar company SunPower has snagged a contract with Macy’s to retrofit every store in California with solar technology.
Mayor Reed credits local business leaders, such as those involved in the SolarTech consortium or the Silicon Valley Leadership Group for stepping up to the green tech challenge and inspiring real benefits that make what his administration less of a pipedream and more of a local business mantra. “Together, we are driving economics in a way that is a big plus,” he says.
July 22nd, 2008
Carbon management software maker snags $5 million
Carbonetworks, which sells software for providing better visibility into managing your company’s carbon impact, has closed $5 million in Series A funding from NGEN Partners.
The company, which is based in Victoria, B.C., will use the money to expand its operations. I blogged about Carbonetworks’ software and services a bit earlier this year.
July 22nd, 2008
More big money for work on wind. Yes, that’s $1 billion.
Finavera Renewables (which has both wind and wave energy projects around the world) has negotiated a deal with an unnamed corporate investor who plans to put up $1 bilion for wind power projects that will create up to 300 megawatts of capacity in British Columbia.
The money is contingent on the approval of a power purchase agreement under the BC Hydro Clean Power Call initiative. The program hopes to stimulate the development of up to 5,000 megawatts of alternative energy capacity, with an ultimate goal of self-sufficiency in the province by 2016 in terms of producing electricity. The deadline for the submissions is Nov. 25, 2008. The purchasing agreements are scheduled to be granted between April and June of next years.
July 21st, 2008
Smart grid players extend their influence beyond the pilot phase
When it comes to real market potential in the green tech space, smart grid-related technology is right up there. In any given week, I could post a half-dozen blogs about developments in this world. Echelon, in particular, has had a very busy summer, inking a new deal in Denmark, expanding its presence in Russia and also establishing a foothold in India with a company that will sell its Networked Energy Services advanced metering system.
In Denmark, Echelon will gain a footprint through an infrastructure deal with utility SEAS-NVE signed by its reseller Eltel Networks A/S as well as additional technology integrators that will handle other software components of the deal. The project deployment is supposed to begin in the fourth quarter with completion scheduled for the end of 2011. The technology will reach about 390,000 customers, and revenue to Echelon is projected to be $40 million.
In Russia, Echelon is working with reseller Engineering Center EnergoAuditControl on project that was significantly extended in June from 100,000 networked meters to a total of approximately 180,000 meters. The company said the deal extension is worth about $6.8 million. Here’s more about the relationship.
Finally, in India, Echelon has signed a deal with technology integrator HCL Infosystems, which is its first reseller in this very populous, fast-growing world economy.
One of HCL’s mainstay customer segments is utility companies, which seems like a smart move given India’s goal of providing electricity to every household by 2012. This will take a roughly $100 billion investment in technologies for generation, distribution, transmission, monitoring and so forth, according to Echelon. The meter market in India is estimated at 100 million nodes.
All together, Echelon says it has shipped 1 million meters worldwide. Aside from the countries I’ve already mentioned, the company has a footprint in Italy, Denmark, Sweden and the United States.
Rivaling Echelon in terms of actual meter deliveries is Trilliant, which so far has shipped more than 750,000 devices for advanced metering applications. The company is working with more than 100 utility companies, so far. Some examples include Louisville Gas & Electric (a subsidiary of E.ON U.S.), which is working with Trilliant on a demand-based pricing system, and Hydro One Brampton, which is in the process of installing a smart metering system. Here’s a good article that gives you a better sense of Trilliant’s background. I’m keeping my eye on both them and Echelon, since their technology has a maturity that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Another company that has my interest is SensorTran, a spinoff of a project that originated at NASA. I spoke with CEO Kent Kalar a couple of weeks back about the company’s background and intended target market. What makes SensorTran unique is that it focuses on monitoring the actual distribution system, that tangle of cables that gets our electricity to the place it needs to go. It has deployed its distributed temperature sensor technology at about 100 sites, according to Kalar, and has interested in Korea, Japan and China. Pilots include some work with Austin Energy, BC Hydro and Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
July 20th, 2008
California greenlights two renewable energy development projects
Southern California Edison has received the thumbs-up from the California Public Utilities Commission to contract to buy clean energy from two new alternative energy projects.
The first, the Granite Wind development in San Bernardino County, will see the construction of a 41-megawatt wind farm slated to come online by Dec. 31, 2009. The facility, which can be expanded up to 81 megawatts, is being codeveloped by Renewable Energy Systems Americas Development, RENEWergy LLC and G.H. Energy Ltd.
Southern California Edison also has contracted with a new solar photovoltaic facility being developed by FSE Blythe in Blythe, Calif. The project is being touted as the first one in California to use utility-scale thin film photovoltaic technology, and it will have a capacity of between 7.4 and 21 megawatts. The projected switch-on date is October 2009.
Here’s some more information from the utility about the projects.
July 20th, 2008
You won’t hear this winery whine about going green. Some tips for SMBs looking for green tech ideas
I’ve been trying out organic wines over the past few months because of my growing intolerance for sulfites, but I never really thought about what that meant until I watched one of the ZDNet Green Enterprise videos this weekend.
In the case of Frog’s Leap Winery, organic doesn’t just mean staying away from fertilizers and other materials that introduce chemicals into the project, it means harnessing solar power and transforming its tasting room into one that qualifies for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.
July 19th, 2008
Pulling money out of thin air. Or, why wind power should be a neighborly concern.
My mother and I chat a lot about different alternative energy options, mainly because she is lucky enough to live in Hawaii where solar hot water has been mandated for future construction. But one thing that has been ultra controversial on the Big Island has been wind power for the same very obvious reasons that other communities have an issue with it: the size of the turbines needed to harness this source of energy.
So, if investing in wind power is likely to make your neighbors upset, why not get your neighbors involved? Heck, while you’re at it, why not give them an ownership stake in the project, so they have the potential to make some money on an alternative energy technology?
That’s the thinking of National Wind, which has taken a community-owned approach to developing wind projects of 50 megawatts or larger in the Midwest and in the Plains States. So far, the company says it is working on about 15 different “families” of projects that have the potential to produce 4,000 megawatts of renewable energy. The company has both a services capacity, which means it can handle wind assessments, and it is an authorized dealer for wind towers from NRG Systems and Composite Tower Solutions.
Here’s an example of how National Wind works its projects. Last month, the company worked through Delphi Financial to hold an intrastate public offering of shares in a 300-megawatt wind powe project for High Country. The farms will be located in Dodge, Olmsted and Mower counties in the state of Minnesota. And just last week, National Wind held another public offering in conjunction with Dakota Wind Energy in Eden, S.D., that will offer local landowners stakes in a 750-megawatt network of wind farms in Roberts, Marshall and Day counties in South Dakota.
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