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1. Akeena's Loss Widens, Quality Issues?
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2. How to Build Your Own XR3 Plug-In Vehicle
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3. Dell Declares It's "Carbon Neutral"
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4. Verdiem Aims At Home PCs, Launches Edison
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5. Wind-Powered Vehicles Set to Race
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6. BP to Invest $90M in Cellulosic Ethanol Producer Verenium
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7. EEStor Joining Other Energy Storage Startups on the Grid
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8. Suniva Secures $500M Solar Cell Deal With Solon
Akeena's Loss Widens, Quality Issues?
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Solar installer Akeena Solar, the company behind a Lego-like modular solar rooftop system, is in need of some sunshine today. The company saw its loss for the second quarter widen to $5.1 million from $1.92 million a year earlier, while its revenues shrank slightly, to $7.06 million from $7.51 million. Sales of commercial installations, however, dropped by a massive 80 percent.
Akeena CEO Barry Cinnamon attributed the drop in commercial installations to the fact that “commercial installations span multiple quarters,” and the company expects to “see continued revenue volatility as commercial projects become a larger portion of our revenue mix.” But the company has also been cutting its operating expenses, and in an age when you’d expect a solar installer to be expanding, the company has cut 36 positions since the beginning of the year. Cinnamon said that the economic weakness and fears that the investment tax credit won’t get renewed are also taking their toll on the solar industry.
The Street wasn’t feeling it. On a day when the U.S. markets overall posted their second straight session of gains, the Los Gato, Calif.-based company saw its shares drop 3.7 percent to close at $4.22. To make matter worse, yesterday Barron’s Eric Savitz reported that Pacific Crest analyst Mark Bachman says Akeena is having quality issues with some of its Andalay solar products. “Some panels are being returned to Akeena, depending on the severity of the defect," and the issues supposedly “involved the frame, and not the performance of the modules themselves.” Regardless, it’s still an issue.
How to Build Your Own XR3 Plug-In Vehicle
Craig Rubens - Misc
With $200, a full machine shop and some mechanical savvy, you can now build your very own XR3 plug-in electric vehicle. Robert Q. Riley Enterprises, a product design firm in Glendale, Ariz., is selling plans for its three-wheeled, two passenger diesel-electric hybrid — the XR3 — to do-it-youselfers. Licensed as a motorcycle in most states, the XR3 uses a diesel engine to power the front two wheels and an electric motor to power the rear wheel, and can reach highway speeds. For $200, you get the 149-page construction manual and a CD stock full of CAD templates. At the high end, the company estimates construction of the vehicle will cost over $25,000, which includes a $9,000 lithium-ion battery pack.
The car can toggle between power sources with a simple flip of a switch. The company claims that in diesel-only mode, the car gets 125 mpg, and with its 3-gallon tank can go over 300 miles on a fill. In all-electric mode, the li-ion battery pack can provide a range of 40 miles, while the hybrid option provides a fuel efficiency equivalent of 225 mpg. But DIYers can choose to scale up the vehicle’s power systems. With a bigger fuel tank the XR3 can get a 1,000 mile diesel-only range, whereas by adding more batteries the car can get over 100 miles per charge, the company says. It’s all up to the builder.
The diesel and electric systems aren’t integrated through a computer like most hybrids. Instead, there’s a simple throttle integrator, so that once in hybrid mode, the electric motor only kicks in to help when you’re accelerating quickly. “Think of it like the passing gear in an automatic transmission,” founder Robert Riley tells us of the electric motor. “The idea is to avoid running on electric power but save it for high acceleration needs.”
The company has just finished filling some 2,500 back orders for these plans. According to Riley, the company has gotten interest from bigger players including ZAP, an electric car maker that makes a similar three-wheeled vehicle. Riley serves on the advisory board for Mattruck, a startup that plans to import the all-electric SARGE Truck from China next year. He hopes to be able to connect with Mattruck’s Chinese manufacturers to make XR3 kits.
If you’re not such a DIYer but want to add a plug to your Prius, check out list of installers who will retrofit your hybrid car for you.
Dell Declares It's "Carbon Neutral"
Celeste LeCompte - Big Green
Dell said this morning that it has achieved its “carbon neutral” goal in less than a year’s time — about five months ahead of the computing giant’s previous schedule — through a combination of energy efficiency, voluntary green power purchases and carbon offsets from rainforest preservation in Madagascar. The program aimed to eliminate or offset 475,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from Dell’s operations in its first year.
Going carbon neutral isn’t easy to do right, but Dell seems to have gotten the essentials down: Get the numbers in place; go for efficiency upgrades first; then offset the rest. (That’s Neal Dikeman’s “Evaluate, Efficiency, Environmental Offset” trinity.) The company dedicated $5 million to the project, which was spent over a period of about two years.
Dell focused on three categories: Direct emissions from actual energy production and fuel use (scope 1); indirect emissions from facilities energy use (scope 2); and employee air travel (scope 3). Carbon emissions from building energy use made up 80 percent of Dell’s calculated impacts, so that’s where the company focused its efficiency efforts, trimming 20,000 tons (4 percent) of carbon dioxide annually. While we’re encouraged by Dell’s plan, we think the company could find additional opportunities for energy efficiency; without major attention to efficiency, buying premium-priced green power is sort of like buying a closet full of new suits just before going on a diet.
So far, Dell has focused on efficiency improvements with a return on investment of three years or less: upgrading lighting fixtures at the company’s Texas campus, updating heating and cooling systems at facilities around the world, and implementing smaller measures across its facilities, such as occupancy sensors for lighting and a power management system for all networked computers. “You can imagine how big our network is!” Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton remarked.
The company has purchased a total 645 million kilowatt hours of green power through voluntary utility programs and renewable energy certificates (as well as VERs), accounting for a total savings of about 400,000 tons of carbon. “If you look at the whole picture, we invested the RECs and VERs…primarily in projects in India, China and the U.S., where we have significant operations and the green power supply needs to be developed,” Hilton noted.
The remainder (and a little extra for good measure) was offset through a partnership with Conservation International. Dell’s next steps are focused on working with its supply chain to reduce carbon inputs to its product lines.
In addition to its carbon-neutral dreams, Dell has started to offer more low-power, eco-computing products. Dell said back in May that it would design its laptops and desktops to consume up to 25 percent less energy than its current computers by 2010. The company plans to meet that goal by adding more energy-efficient circuits, fans and power management features, and by investing in energy-efficient hardware like chips, power supply and memory. And of course there’s that eco-chic bamboo PC that started rolling off Dell assembly lines last week.
Verdiem Aims At Home PCs, Launches Edison
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
The company says Edison is its answer to all those home PCs that don’t have the power settings enabled; Verdiem’s VP Marketing Allison Cornia said on a call this week, 90 percent of the world’s desktop computers have energy management settings disabled. The software itself is slick and easy-to-use, with settings to manage power for work hours and non work hours. The company is even planning to work with Carbon Rally to offer the opportunity to use that power (and carbon) saving data in a social network setting; the idea being you can see how green you are compared to your peer group.
But, as Cornia pointed on the call, about half of U.S. PC users don’t know what power management software is or how to use it. While Edison is pretty simple, convincing the average user to visit Verdiem’s web site and actively download the software will take a lot of convincing, i.e. marketing. For that, Verdiem is hoping to work with partners and eventually bundle the software with big OEM partners; HP already bundles an HP-branded version of Edison for business customers. Microsoft is also asking Windows PC users to download Edison to “augment” current PC power settings. Major deals like that could put the software on PCs much more quickly.
Above all, Edison seems like a savvy marketing move for Verdiem. It likely won’t make up a substantial part of company sales, but it’s good for getting the company’s name out there and likely wasn’t too expensive to build. And as John Skinner, co-chair of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s Marketing Workgroup said to us on a call, home desktop computers are the low hanging fruit — the CSCI is looking to reduce carbon emissions from computers 54 million tons by 2010 and calling for 10 million downloaded copies of Edison this year. With 2 percent of carbon emissions attributed to computing, small initiatives like Edison could make a real dent. That is, if the company can get the word out.
Verdiem does have some newly raised marketing money. In April the company closed a round of $12 million, led by NCD Investors (formerly Northgate Capital) and existing investors Kleiner Perkins, the Westly Group, Catamount Ventures, Falcon Partners and Phoenix Partners. Final thought: We want a Mac version.
Wind-Powered Vehicles Set to Race
Craig Rubens - In the Lab
The race is being organized by Windenergy Events as part of the the Tall Ships Races 2008 taking place in the waters off Den Helder. According to the competition rules wind-powered vehicles must have at least three wheels, a rotor area of no more than four square meters and be no more than 3.5 meters tall. Prizes will be awarded in nine categories, including fastest team, best design and even “bad luck” for those who can’t get the wind behind them.
If we have any E2T readers near Stuttgart, the Ventomobile engineers are demoing their vehicle on August 12 and any attending the Tall Ships Races, make sure to report back on how the Aeolus race goes. For those who won’t be able to visit the land of tulips, wind mills and now wind-powered vehicles, check out the videos after the jump of the Ventomobile’s construction.
BP to Invest $90M in Cellulosic Ethanol Producer Verenium
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Verenium has managed to stay at the front of the pack of biofuel producers looking to build cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S., and this morning has announced backing from a major oil player that could help it progress even more. UK oil giant BP will invest $90 million into Verenium over the next 18 months to both access Verenium’s cellulosic ethanol technology, and with plans to create a joint venture to work on cellulosic ethanol production.
The move represents one of BP’s larger commitments to biofuels and particularly cellulosic ethanol. Previously the oil giant committed about $60 million to take a 50 percent stake in Tropical BioEnergia, a Brazilian company that plans to build two ethanol refineries in Brazil. BP is also funding the $500 million academic and industry collaboration the Energy Biosciences Institute, as well as Craig Venter’s biofuel startup Synthetic Genomics.
For Verenium the move is a validation of its progress. On the news of BP’s investment Verenium’s [VRNM] shares rose over 50 percent $3.04. As one of more than a dozen companies racing to build cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States, the company was able to claim a “first” earlier this year; in June the Massachusetts-based company said it had officially opened a “first of its kind” demonstration facility in Jennings, La., which will produce 1.4 million gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol. The company says its demo plant is now in the commissioning phase (final testing and evaluation) and is supposed to be on track to start construction of a 30-million-gallon-per-year commercial plant "in the middle of next year."
Verenium claims it will also be the first company to build a commercial cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States, and the company is working on 10 different sites it could tap for commercial cellulosic ethanol production, mostly in the Southeast and all in various stages of development. A variety of other startups with similar aims include Range Fuels, Coskata, Mascoma and BlueFire Ethanol.
Verenium has been around longer than some of the younger companies. Founded in 1994 as Celunol, the company reportedly raised more than $60 million from Khosla Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures, Charles River, and Rho Ventures. In 2007 Celunol was bought by Diversa for over $100 million and was renamed Verenium in 2007.
Though one thing to remember with all this “racing to be first to build cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States” is that the ethanol market has gotten considerably more difficult as of late. The price of corn has gone sky high and the political landscape has started to move away from supporting biofuels. Verenium's stock had been dropping for months, down 12 percent in February on its weak earnings; for the quarter ended Dec. 31, Verenium posted a loss of $21.6 million, compared with $6.1 million, for the same period a year earlier. This Thursday Verenium announces second quarter earnings.
EEStor Joining Other Energy Storage Startups on the Grid
Craig Rubens - Startups
EEStor, maker of the supposedly killer energy storage device, might soon plug its “electrical energy storage unit” (EESU) into the grid to help solve renewable energy’s intermittent power generation problem of when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. MIT Technology Review reports that the stealthy Austin, Texas-based startup is in “serious talks” with potential solar and wind energy partners to help boost grid capacity by providing utility-scale electricity storage. But before EEStor puts its EESUs on the grid it will have start making them and CEO Dick Weir has said production will start by the end of 2009.
EEStor joins AltairNano and A123 Systems as startups looking to connect their energy storage devices to the grid. The idea is that large capacity, fast-charging storage devices could sit on the grid, storing and providing energy to the grid as necessary. Excess energy generated at night could be stored and then used during the day during peak demand. Large, static storage devices could allow operators more flexibility and help renewable energy offer a stable base load. Weir claims that by partnering with wind and solar energy producers, EEStor could put 45 percent more energy on the grid.
AltairNano is developing ceramic lithium-ion batteries with nano-structured materials that allow for large amounts of surface area for fast charging. AltairNano’s new CEO Terry Copeland told us earlier this summer that the startup had successfully charged and discharged two megawatts of power to the grid in 30 minutes from one of their batteries in a partnership with AES.
Battery darling A123 Systems said in June it is already working with its investor General Electric to use its lithium-ion batteries for “grid stabilization.” Ric Fulop, founder and vice president of business development, said on a panel of energy storage experts organized by the New England Clean Energy Council that the battery technology is already there. “Now it’s a question of building the systems. Megawatt-level systems are all about systems integration.”
EEStor has a long way to go before it tackles systems integration. The startup just had its materials verified for purity and consistency, a necessary step, but far off from a working EESU. “I’m not going to make claims on when we’re going to get product out there,” Weir Told MIT Tech Review unapologetically. “That’s between me and the customer. I don’t want to tell the industry.”
Suniva Secures $500M Solar Cell Deal With Solon
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
It’s a significant customer win for the two-year-old startup, and follows on the heels of Suniva’s announcement that it has signed a five-year contract with Norwegian polysilicon producer REC to have access to $300 million worth of silicon wafers to produce cells. The company will use that polysilicon supply in its first manufacturing plant it is building in Gwinnett County, Georgia; the plant will have initial solar production capacity of 32 MW, with a potential for expansion to 100 MW.
While the company makes its cells from silicon, it manufactures them thinner, reducing the overall cost. At the same time the company claims a high efficiency of over 20 percent. The company is backed by over $50 million from New Enterprise Associates, Advanced Equities, Goldman Sachs Group, HIG Ventures and Quercus Investments.
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