THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for April, 2011

Smart building startup Scientific Conservation has officially brought on power conglomerate GE as an investor. While the company announced a Series B round of $15.65 million in January of this year, Thursday morning, Scientific Conservation said it has boosted that round to $19 million, with investment from GE Energy Financial Services and investors Triangle Peak Partners.

In a separate announcement Thursday morning, Scientific Conservation also said it has a deal with chip giant Intel to reduce energy consumption for campuses, workspaces and data center cooling. And as part of the deal, Intel Capital has also invested in Scientific Conservation.

Scientific Conservation came out of stealth back in the summer of 2009 after spending years developing and selling its product: a web-based software platform that links into a building’s existing automation system and applies analytics to continuously predict, detect and diagnose system faults and anomalies. CEO Russ McMeekin has estimated the company will grow from 20 million square feet under management today to 100 to 150 million square feet by the end of 2011, and customers include Neiman Marcus, California’s Santa Clara County, Boeing and GE.

GE has been supportive of the company even before this investment, and GE picked Scientific Conservation as one of its 12 Ecomagination Challenge winners. GE’s real estate arm, GE Capital Real Estate, also plans to install the company’s analytics in “several” buildings in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. GE’s interest in the company, is a real validation that it works as advertised and saves building owners money on energy bills.

Most large commercial buildings in the U.S. rely on some type of automation system for operators to monitor their buildings’ energy consumption. Scientific Conservation’s tools pull in data from existing sensors installed in a building, combine that data with weather data and power pricing from utilities, run simulations, and identify faults. The software can predict imminent failures by comparing data with past performance. It also prioritizes the maintenance needed and estimates the cost of inaction. Sensors or other devices that are malfunctioning — even intermittently — are identified and, once replaced, make air conditioning and other energy hogs in a building run as intended.

Other companies offering similar services include Pulse Energy, BuildingIQ (one of our Green:Net Big Ideas winners), and Cisco’s Building Mediator. While long-established companies like Johnson Controls have been developing automation systems for decades, these newer entrants are leveraging advances in information technology and the Internet to make these older building automation systems run more efficiently.

Scientific Conservation has now raised $28 million, and other investors in the firm include Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Westly Group.

Image courtesy of Scientific Conservation.

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Google is one of the largest clean energy corporate leaders in the U.S. If we had more Googles (and fewer Facebooks or Apples), it looks like we’d have a much brighter future. Hopefully, others will follow Google’s lead sooner than later on this front, or even try to one-up it. For now, though, it’s clean energy enthusiasm and investments are hard to compete with.

With a number of recent clean energy project announcements, I thought it might be nice to run down a list of Google’s major projects of the last year or so.

1. Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (“largest solar energy project in the world”): $168 million invested.

Ivanpah is a utility-scale solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert in California that “will have a net power capacity of 370 MW (which means that it is expected to generate enough electricity for ~85,000 homes according to the DOE or ~140,000 homes based on BrightSource Energy’s utility power purchase agreement), and will double the amount of solar thermal-generated electricity worldwide.”

(Announcement April 11, 2011)

2. Caithness Shepherds Flat Wind Farm (“largest wind farm in world”): $100 million invested.

“The 845-megawatt behemoth, called the Caithness Shepherds Flat project, will be sited in eastern Oregon and bring hundreds of new construction jobs to the area,” Tina wrote in December. 845 MW is enough for over 235,000 homes. The project is supposed to be up in 2012.

From Rick Needham of Google:

This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. Though the technology has been installed outside the U.S., it’s an important, incremental step in lowering the cost of wind energy over the long term in the U.S.

(Announcement April 18, 2011)

3. Offshore Wind Superhighway: Investment total undisclosed, but surely tens of millions of dollars (37.5% of the equity of the initial development stage).

This project, as Susan wrote in October, consists of:

350 miles of transmission off the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Virginia to tap into gigantic off-shore wind potential…. The new transmission cables, a superhighway for clean energy, will enable the connection of up to 6,000 MW of offshore wind turbines. That’s equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.

(Announcement October 11, 2010)

4. NextEra Energy Resources Wind Project: $38.8 million invested.

In May 2010, Rick Needham of Google wrote:

On Friday we made our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project — two wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 55,000 homes. These wind farms, developed by NextEra Energy Resources, harness power from one of the world’s richest wind resources in the North Dakota plains and use existing transmission capacity to deliver clean energy to the region, reducing the use of fossil fuels. Through this $38.8 million investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too.

(Announcement May 3, 2010)

5. 20-Year Power Purchase Agreement with NextEra Energy Resources.

Google signed a 20-year contract to buy power from a 114-MW Iowa wind farm in July, 2010. At that time, Urs Hoelzle of Google wrote:

We just completed a substantial 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement that allows us to take responsibility for our footprint and foster true growth in the renewable energy sector. On July 30 we will begin purchasing the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate for 20 years. Incorporating such a large amount of wind power into our portfolio is tricky (read more about how the deal is structured), but this power is enough to supply several data centers.

By contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, we’re giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects. The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy. We’ve been excited about this deal because taking 114 megawatts of wind power off the market for so long means producers have the incentive and means to build more renewable energy capacity for other customers.

(Announcement July 20, 2010)

Update: It was recently announced that Google would be buying another 100 MW or so from NextEra Energy (from a different wind farm): “Google Energy will purchase 100.8 megawatts of clean, renewable energy from NextEra Energy Resources’ Minco II Wind Energy Center under development in Grady and Caddo counties in Oklahoma.”

6. Advanced Geothermal Energy Systems: Over $10 million invested.

In total, Google has put over $10 million into a promising, clean energy source not many are familiar with — geothermal. Last October, I noted that one of its investments, a $481,500 grant it gave the Southern Methodist University to look into geothermal energy potential in West Virginia, paid off pretty well. 78% more geothermal energy was found under the state than was previously expected.

West Virginia currently has an electricity generating capacity of 16,350 MW (~97% of that coming from coal power), but the report concluded that if only 2% of the state’s geothermal energy were recovered, it could produce up to 18,890 MW of capacity from clean energy.

Now, hopefully we can tap into that and stop chopping the tops off mountains, polluting communities and ecosystems while also contributing to global climate change.

7. German Solar Power Plant: Invested $5 million.

In its first international clean energy investment, Google recently said it was putting €3.5 million into a 18.7-MW German solar power plant not far from Berlin. The plant is expected to power up approximately 5,000 German homes. It will be one of the biggest power plants in Germany.

“Germany has a strong framework for renewable energy and is home to many leading-edge technology companies in the sector. More than 70% of the solar modules installed in Brandenburg are provided by German manufacturers,” Benjamin Kott of Google wrote.

(Announcement April 7, 2011)

Turns out, some folks at Greenpeace had the same idea as me in highlighting Google’s big, recent projects — I ended up referencing the following article from them a bit in writing the post above: Google is on a Roll with Renewable Energy.

Any more big clean energy projects from Google that I missed?

Connect with me on Twitter @zshahan3 or Facebook or StumbleUpon.

Image via Google

Many of the next-generation of thin film solar companies are caught in a make-or-break stage of ramping up to high volume production, eventually looking to reach 1 GW per year in solar panel manufacturing. But a good deal of these companies don’t seem to have much trouble finding customers to buy the panels, once they actually produce them. Thursday morning, seven-year-old thin film solar company Nanosolar announced that it’s entered into a supply agreement to sell 1 GW worth of solar panels to German utilities Belectric and Plain Energy, and French utility EDF Energies Nouvelles.

Mind you that gigawatt figure is over a six year or so period. Nanosolar is only now producing around 1 MW worth of solar panels per month. In a tour I did of the factory last October, there was a lot of empty space and room for growth.

Later this Summer, however, Nanosolar hopes to ramp up production at the San Jose factory to around 7 to 8 MW per month, or the equivalent of about 115 MW per year. Then after Nanosolar hits that milestone, it will look to raise funding to about double that capacity to 250 MW of annual production per year by 2013, still in its San Jose, Calif. factory. Beyond 2013, the plan will be to build another 500 MW factory, likely somewhere near its San Jose factory, and by 2014 ramp that second factory up to 750 MW. So voila: 1 GW.

Well, that’s the plan anyways. And at least Nanosolar seems more likely to stick to its timeline, than the company would have two years ago under the leadership of then-CEO and founder Martin Rocheisen. Back in 2009 Rocheisen announced that the company had reached “high volume production,” though clearly Nanosolar was far from that stage then.

Today, Nanosolar, is in a similar stage as some of its next-gen thin film solar competitors. MiaSole has about 50 MW of annual production capacity and expects to cross over 150 MW by the end of this year. To get it there, earlier this week, MiaSole said it had brought in some Intel execs to get some tips on ramping up to mass production. Solyndra, which focuses on rooftop solar panels not ground mounted utility systems, is now set to produce 200 MW of its tube-shaped solar panels annually, and the company hopes to boost that to 300 MW worth of solar panels produced annually by 2013.

Nanosolar, like MiaSole, is looking to chase First Solar, which is by far the thin film solar leader, but is using an older technology. First Solar had 1.4 GW of capacity in 2010, and it plans to reach 2.7 GW by the end of 2012. Japanese company Solar Frontier also expects to reach full scale production of its next-gen solar panels at its 900MW solar factory in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan, this summer.

Nanosolar, Solyndra, MiaSole and Solar Frontier all produce solar panels using copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS), a combination that requires precise layering and distribution of the materials to achieved desired efficiencies. CIGS panels have the potential to rival the more popular silicon panels in efficiency and price, but the vast majority of CIGS companies are small and in the process of working on beefing up their manufacturing operations.

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Nuclear waste startup Kurion only came out of stealth back in November to discuss its plan to modularize the process of turning nuclear waste into glass (the generally accepted way of dealing with the waste). Now this morning Reuters reports that the beleaguered Japanese utility that owns the nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), plans to start treating contaminated water at its reactors this Summer with technology from Kurion, Toshiba, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, and Areva.

TEPCO tells Reuters that the amount of water that it has pumped into its reactors to stop them from overheating has reached about 87,500 tons. That water, which is contaminated with radioactive materials, needs to be cleaned, and the group’s technology can “adsorb and isolate radioactive elements, then the treated water would be re-used to cool down the reactors,” reports Reuters.

Kurion’s technology and business plan is to make the process of vitrification — or turning nuclear waste into glass — modular, which makes it cheaper, faster and more efficient. Vitrification essentially permanently encapsulates nuclear waste, and while it’s still radioactive, the waste can be stored and transported more easily. Kurion has also developed a better vitrification pre-treatment process.

Josh Wolfe, a partner with Lux Capital that invested in Kurion along with Firelake Capital, explained to me in an interview late last year that Kurion’s process called the “Modular Vitrification System (MVS),” “brings the technology to the waste tanks, instead of taking the waste to a massive centralized treatment plant.” “Our technology flips the vitrification process on its head,” said Wolfe, “making vitrification an order of magnitude less expensive.”

Kurion has completed other milestones over the past several months, including small scale testing of its technology, and has moved into “a long series of tests on simulated waste streams.” Kurion also says it has a contract with engineering firm CH2MHill to test out its tech to manage uranium metal bearing sludges at a site in the U.S.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades. Wolfe told me that $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. Now with the Japanese nuclear disaster — which was recently raised to the threat level of Chernobyl — there’s also an immediate short term market.

Image courtesy of TEPCO.

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Of late there has been much talk about moving towards a solar energy future. This is a positive development (albeit one that is almost too late) and has been driven, no doubt, by recent studies that have shown that solar and wind power are now amongst the cheapest forms of power generation, several critical breakthroughs in related fields, and big moves by some major players. However, it seems that a lot of money is being thrown at a particular type of solar power plant; massive centralized solar plants. It is my opinion that this is a massive mistake.

We have an opportunity to build a new power system to replace our failing grid with something more resilient, more efficient and more egalitarian, and if we don’t take this opportunity we will be stuck with mild changes to the old system. I feel that big solar is actually a real threat to our future, or at least our best possible future, and we need to focus a bit on it now before the form of our electrical system is set in stone.

In fairness, centralized solar does have a few benefits, so let’s start with them before I explain why a decentralized system would be a much better choice.

1. A centralized solar plant requires fewer engineers and workers to build and maintain the solar power collectors than a distributed system, on a per megawatt basis. This means there is less up front cost, and you employ fewer people. I guess that might help the stock price, since Wall St. tends to invest against employing people.

2. A large solar installation, or better, many of them spread across many states, provides a consistent money stream for the plant owner, especially after the upfront cost of the plant is paid off.

3. A large solar installation can take the place of a coal or nuclear plant, providing energy without the many downsides of the older technologies.

Notice anything about these benefits? The first two are primarily beneficial to the plant operator, and not to the community that the solar plant is in.

1. A decentralized solar collection scheme is far more energy efficient than a centralized one. More than 30% of our electricity is lost in transmission in our current system, and a centralized solar plant is no different than the current system in this way. A decentralized system can supply power to where it is needed directly most of the time, only using the grid to offload surplus power.

2. A decentralized solar strategy will employ far more people per megawatt than a centralized one, employing small businesses and technicians to maintain and install systems wherever they are needed. We really need jobs right now, so this should be a big selling point.

3. A decentralized solar system will be far more resilient to natural disasters, as there will be no single points of failure that can bring down the whole grid, as there is with centralized power generation. Do you remember the blackout of 2003? A bad solar storm could be far worse.

4. A decentralized solar system utilizes unused space on rooftops and in yards to generate power, whereas a centralized system requires the development of new land, destroying habitats while generating no more power. Indeed, given the amount of unused roof space in the US, you could completely solve our energy issues by covering only a small fraction of it with solar collectors. Add solar collectors built into roads and pathways, and we have all of the space we need to solve the energy crisis for good without clearing any more land.

5. A decentralized solar strategy gives power to the people, in more ways than one. Since the people are generating electricity, they are also generating capital continuously in the form of free electrons. The result is that the community is made richer across the board, by producing a useful, valuable commodity directly under the control of middle and lower class people.

6. A decentralized solar strategy provides market space for lots of technologies to compete directly, without the generally anti-competitive nature of big monolithic construction contracts crowding out the small players. In the short run, this will provide more opportunities for small businesses to grow. In the long run, this enriched competition will produce a more efficient and refined product.

7. Rooftop systems shade the structure underneath, cutting energy usage in the summer months. This is an additional energy savings above and beyond the major issue of transmission losses.

8. A decentralized solar collection strategy preserves a place for things such as solar water heaters, which are a much more efficient way to heat water than generating power miles away, losing a significant portion of it by shoving it through wires, and then heating more wires to heat water. The difference in efficiency for this one task is enormous.

9. A decentralized solar strategy doesn’t require huge governmental loan guarantees to get off the ground. It doesn’t require government help at all, though it would be nice if local governments would get out of the way and let people set up these systems without bureaucratic hassles or ridiculous energy buy back schemes. If the government gets involved, it could be in the form of rebates or tax abatements, which are proven to be a more effective way of distributing public funds into the economy than big monolithic projects. Or it could be in the form of innovative projects that use the acres of rooftops on civic structures to generate power instead of just more heat. Even if you are utterly skeptical of governmental action, you could just think of it as a handy way of reducing the hot air coming out of your local legislative bodies, while finally putting them to some useful work.

10. This one is often missed: the secondary costs of a centralized power system, like beefed up transmission lines, large ugly transformer stations, and so on are rarely calculated into the cost of concentrating lots of megawatts in one place, but all of those expensive accessories are going to have to be paid for somehow.

What about wind? Well, it turns out that wind generators work best when they are spaced out generously, and so the laws of physics are already working against a whole lot of centralization. Many of the early attempts at a highly centralized wind generator were a failure because the closely packed mills created turbulence that reduced efficiency and in some cases caused damage. The closest things out there are some very successful county projects, but in those cases people in rural areas rent out a parcel of their own land for the windmill to be erected on. It works, it’s easy money, and it’s out of the bag. You should assume that everything I am arguing for here can work just fine with all of the wind power we can muster.

Of course, we can’t expect people to build a complete power system themselves. There still needs to be some large scale investment in such a system, and I think there is money to be made while strengthening our communities. A number of corporations, like Boeing, have already seen the value in investing in a form of power that is not tied to the fickle winds of international politics. Decentralized power requires an investment in regional and local power storage devices to hold extra power generated on windy or sunny days and release it back into the system on less active ones. The thing is, our current system really needs such a capability too, as even there is energy lost in off-peak hours by idling generators. Soaking up some of that electricity cheaply and releasing it in peak hours could be a profitable business even now. However, for some reason, I can’t fathom getting financing even for mature and dependable alternative power systems, like geothermal, is extremely difficult. Correcting that lack of foresight on behalf of the credit issuers might require some loud complaining by a lot of people. Indeed, the work that is needed to correct a wide variety of outdated policies is the a greater barrier to the widespread adoption of alternative energy than any technical challenge.

All of the problems that we have with our current, decaying electrical system will need to be fixed, unless we care to look forward to a future of power shortages. It’s going to require a lot of investment, no matter what. We can try to hold together the old system with stopgap measures, but the inherent inefficiency of transporting electricity over long distances simply can not be corrected. If we all take the initiative, we can break up the system into something that is more flexible, and sustainable. One that can stand up to trouble in a way more like the internet than a house of cards. And one that will pay off it’s greater upfront cost by sharing the load of that cost better, and paying off bigger in the long run. But we all have to understand what is at stake, and that positive change is going to be opposed by people who would rather build new monopolies than give (electrical) power to the people.

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Related Links:

• The Center for Energy and Independent Technologies
• The World Alliance for Decentralized Energy

Image via National Renewable Energy Laboratory/JustinSavidge/Wikipedia