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1. The Daily Sprout
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2. Green Auto Startup Shows Off Hydrogen-Powered "Scorpion"
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3. eSolar Scores 245MW Solar Deal in SoCal
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Leading Silicon Producer to Double Production: Hemlock Semiconductor says that they will double their output of silicon this year for both semiconductors and solar in a $1.5 billion expansion - Cleantech.
DOE Expects More Wind than Coal: A new report form the U.S. Department of Energy enumerated 225 gigawatts of proposed wind projects, far more than all the coal and natural gas power plants in the pipeline - Wired.
$1 Per Watt Wind?: Dallas, Texas-based BroadStar Wind Energy came out of stealth at the WINDPOWER 2008 with a bold claim - their AeroCam Turbine can achieve $1 a watt, installed - Cleantech.
EDP Renovaveis Has $2.4 Billion IPO: The Portuguese utility EDP raised €1.57B (~$2.4B) in the IPO of its renewable energy arm - Clean Edge.
“The Future Is Now?”: Ray Kurzweil, one of the world’s most optimistic and credible futurists, sees a sunny future. Solar power will be cost competitive with fossil fuels in five years and in 20 years all our energy will come from clean sources, he claims. Make sure to check his graphs - NYTimes.
SF Solar Incentive Inches Toward Law: The full San Francisco board of supervisors voted today to pass the solar incentive program, but it will need a final reading next week when a competing, scaled back solar incentive proposal will also be voted on. So, still in limbo.
Green Auto Startup Shows Off Hydrogen-Powered "Scorpion"
Craig Rubens - Startups
The race to get green cars to market continues to heat up. Today brought details of the Scorpion, an “eco-exotic” sports car with an on-board hydrogen generator made by Ronn Motor Co. The Austin, Texas-based company says it hopes to have the first production Scorpion, which will cost $150,000, on the road by October, and to build 190 more over the next year. And Ronn Motor is getting ready to develop its second-generation vehicle, likely a four-door sedan, in the next six months, VP Adrian Pylypec tells Earth2Tech.
Ronn appears to be taking a page out of the books of Tesla and Fisker: Launching a high-end, high-concept sexy sportscar and then, after grabbing lots of media attention and working out the kinks, incorporating the technology into a more consumer-friendly sedan. “I'm honored to be mentioned in the same sentence as Telsa and Fisker,” Pylypec says.
The Scorpion burns a mix of gasoline and hydrogen in its combustion engine. Regular tap water is split into hydrogen with electricity from two batteries that are charged by an oversized alternator. The hydrogen is produced by the G3 unit of Hydrorunner;, which makes on-demand hydrogen system available for retrofit into existing cars. A dual-processor computer will manage the flow and ratio of hydrogen, keeping the fuel at around 30-40 percent hydrogen, Ronn says.
Funding-wise, the company has taken in an undisclosed of private investment. Shares of Ronn started trading on the OTC Bulletin Board last week; the company hopes to get an IPO underwritten a year from now.
Founder and CEO Ronn Maxwell, previously designed a new A/C system for Porsche’s 911, worked with large Chinese bus manufacturer Zhonda and as well as with Amos Minter, the famous bodywork designer of the imitable 1955-57 Thunderbirds.
Currently the company only has just eight employees, but does have several operable pre-production prototypes. But as production moves ahead, Pylypec says they’ll have 20 employees in a month and 40-45 come October. Currently the company is in the “shakeout stage,” Pylypec says, as the last few tweaks are made to the prototypes before heading into production. From our experience with Tesla, we know the shakeout stage can take longer than expected. We’ll see if Ronn’s new Scorpion gets stung.
eSolar Scores 245MW Solar Deal in SoCal
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
eSolar, the solar startup backed by Google.org and Bill Gross’ Idealab, said today that it’s inked a deal to build a 245 MW solar thermal power plant in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California and sell that solar power to utility Southern California Edison. eSolar expects the plant to be fully operational by 2011. In April, eSolar said it would have a power plant up and running later this year in Southern California (if this is the same one, that’s fast construction!)
There are over a dozen companies building solar thermal plants in California’s deserts; these plants will use lenses and mirrors to concentrate the suns rays to heat liquid and power a steam turbine. But eSolar is trying to differentiate itself by building “modular,” smaller setups that the company says are cheaper and easier to deploy.
eSolar uses smaller heliostats — the mirrors that track the sun's rays — and says it will use “computing and the technology of mass manufacturing” to make solar scale at a lower cost. eSolar explains that strategy as replacing "expensive steel, concrete and brute force with inexpensive computing power and elegant algorithms."
Guess the pitch worked, because it convinced Southern California Edison. The utility was likely also reassured by eSolar’s announcement in April that it had raised a whopping $130 million from Google.org, Bill Gross' Idealab, Oak Investment Partners and other investors. eSolar also says it has "secured land rights" in the southwestern U.S. to produce over 1 GW of power.
This is one of the first announcements we’ve heard in quite awhile from Southern California Edison involving solar thermal plants. The utility tells us that it has a solar thermal portfolio that goes back to the 80’s and more recently has a plant deal in the works with Stirling Energy Systems, which it decided on back in 2005. But Southern California Edison is also investing in one of the most ambitious solar rooftop projects to date, promising 250 megawatts of photovoltaic power covering more than two square miles (some 65 million square feet) of Southern California's commercial building rooftops.
Northern California utility PG&E aso already has several deals in the works with solar thermal startups Solel, BrightSource Energy and Ausra. Heck, PG&E might even build and own its own solar thermal power plants.
Now the next step for the plant that eSolar will build and Southern California Edison will buy power from, is to get approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. Though this will likely happen, we’ve also seen cases where for whatever reason the CPUC doesn’t come through.
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