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1. PG&E Signs Massive 800 MW PV Solar Deals With OptiSolar, SunPower
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2. The Finer Points of the Chevy Volt
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3. Amyris Picks Up Another $21M For Synthetic Bio
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4. Samsung Adds More Corn Phones, This Time At Olympics
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5. Samsung Launches Software for More Efficient Phones, Gadgets
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6. Kevin Rose's Next Startup to be Green Focused?
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7. Tesla's Ze'ev on CARB's "Misguided" ZEV Mandate
PG&E Signs Massive 800 MW PV Solar Deals With OptiSolar, SunPower
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
Solar industry watchers wondering if OptiSolar’s gigantic 550 MW photovoltaic solar power plant was, in fact, being built or if it was just a figment of the startup’s enthusiastic imagination can put their fears to rest. The thin-film solar maker said this afternoon that it already has a utility signed up to buy the clean power: PG&E. So, yes folks, this is the real deal. The northern California utility said it has inked an agreement with OptiSolar unit Topaz Solar Farms to purchase electricity from the 550 MW San Luis Obispo County, Calif. farm, once it’s operational, in 2011.
The OptiSolar deal is part of a broader plan from PG&E to purchase 800 MW of solar power that will also see it buy 250 MW from High Plains Ranch II, a subsidiary of SunPower. The PV plant uses SunPower’s high-efficiency solar cells, while OptiSolar’s plant will implement that company’s amorphous silicon thin-film solar material.
OptiSolar’s plant is one of a new wave of thin-film solar farms being built in the U.S., and for now, appears to be the largest. To date the wave had largely been driven by thin-film darling First Solar. First Solar is building a 10 MW solar photovoltaic power plant for power company Sempra Generation near Boulder City, Nev., as well as a 7.5 MW plant (with the potential to scale up to 21 MW) in Blythe, Calif., in a contract with Southern California Edison. And then there’s First Solar’s contract for the first 2 MW installation of a distributed 250 MW rooftop system, again for SoCal Edison.
But OptiSolar has scored big time with this PG&E deal. It validates the company’s claims — and its massive funding. OptiSolar recently raised $77.8 million from investors, on top of a $132 million round raised back in April. Total funding over more than $200 million makes it one of the most well-funded cleantech startups around.
The SunPower folks will also be happy about the deal. Its power plants generally fall into the single to double-digit MW range; the largest listed on its web site is a 23 MW plant in Trujillo, Spain, though the company is also working on a 25-megawatt plant in DeSoto County, Fla., for FPL. This is the first we’ve heard of the High Plains II subsidiary, but it appears the solar maker has a lot of subsidiaries under its wing. The 250 MW plant is also in San Luis Obispo County and will be operational starting in 2010.
These two latest deals photovoltaic solar deals from PG&E are also a sign that PV is starting to make strides as a viable utility solar source. Previously many of the large utility solar deals had been for solar thermal plants.
The Finer Points of the Chevy Volt
Tony Borroz - Energy
Chevy's upcoming electric vehicle the Volt — highly anticipated, and crucial to GM's future — has gotten a lot of press for its fully integrated hybrid drivetrain, but relatively little attention has been paid to the car’s aerodynamics. In a blog post on GM’s FastLane, Bob Boniface, director of design for the Volt, points out the various streamlined features, even including a few new sneak-peek photos for good measure (see below).
After drivetrain efficiency, aerodynamics is the second most important factor in a car’s overall energy consumption. As Boniface writes, "When you're driving down the road, it takes energy to slice through the air that is pushing against the car. That force is known as drag and it can account for up to 20 percent of the energy consumed in an average vehicle." And for hybrids and electric vehicles, efficiency is paramount.
Boniface says that GM spent hours experimenting with various angle designs, which they tested in the wind tunnel (see video below), before deciding on the “rounded and flushed front fascia, tapered corners and closed grille” shown in the photos above.
In a world of least air resistance, the teardrop is the ideal aerodynamic shape — look at Aptera's Typ-1. That's one way Aptera gets such stunning MPG figures; a vehicle like that will cut through the air like a knife through water.
Not every vehicle maker is willing to go to such lengths on design to cut down on drag. But the Volt needs to be a mainstream vehicle, one that not just early adopters will buy. So there has to be both an aesthetic reason for every line and form, as well as sound aerodynamic reasoning behind those lines and forms.
And the Volt needs to be able to produce considerable speed. Not like a race car, but to meet the expectations of a mid- to high-end car. Increasing a vehicle's speed does horrendous things to the aero drag on it. When the car speeds up to 20 miles an hour from 10, the drag doesn't double, it quadruples. When you increase your speed to 40 mph, it quadruples again. Every time you double your speed, you quadruple the drag. This is known as the inverse square law, and you can see why it takes so much energy to push a race car down a track at, say, 200 mph.
When the Volt eventually comes out, it will be up to the customers to decide if they like the aesthetic decisions vs. the aerodynamic ones. And it could be another reason why the Volt looks a little different from the standard. But as Boniface notes: “When you're trying to extend gas-free driving of the vehicle, you'll take all the efficiency you can get.”
Amyris Picks Up Another $21M For Synthetic Bio
Craig Rubens - Startups
The Emeryville, Calif.-based startup has some of the most prominent cleantech VCs backing it, including DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and TPG Ventures. Add this to the $20 million Amyris got in 2006 and its funding is now up to over $110 million.
The company is trying to make microbes that will chomp through biomass and pump out petroleum-like molecules. The approach is similar to that of several startups, including Gevo, LS9 (both Khosla bets), and Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, which are all trying to make biomass into fuels that act more like petroleum than biofuel. The advantage is that, if successful, the startups could produce fuels that are 100 percent compatible with existing infrastructure and vehicles — no flex-fuel engines or alt-pipelines necessary.
Amyris is already working to get its technology into the most developed biofuel market out there — Brazil. Through a partnership with Crystalev, a subsidiary of sugar and ethanol giant Santelisa, Amryis is applying its technology to sugarcane bagasse. Amyris tells us Crystalev has also provided it with some funding to help push its synthetic diesel program forward.
Amyris, which now has about 170 employees, started off as a pure synthetic biology company, not a biofuel startup. Its first project was to engineer a microbe to pump out an anti-malarial drug. While visiting Sand Hill Road VCs looking for money, the founders realized there was a lot of interest in the potential to engineer fuel-producing bugs. Now, with more than $110 million in venture capital, Amyris is working on getting three different fuels — bio-diesel, bio-gasoline and bio-jet fuel — to market by 2010. Amyris tells us this latest funding will be used to push its bio-diesel process out of the lab and into a pilot plant.
Samsung Adds More Corn Phones, This Time At Olympics
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Samsung claims that a ton of bioplastic used in the E200 is able to reduce 2.16 tons of CO2 compared with the conventional petroleum-based material. Cheil Industries, an affiliate of the Samsung Group, is the company behind Samsung’s bioplastic production. While we applaud Samsung’s moves into bioplastics, we’d like to see some more sustainable, non-corn synthetic plastics used.
A spokesperson for Samsung told us recently that the company is testing materials derived from plants other than corn to produce its bioplastics, and it’s also working on “eco-friendly materials” other than plastic alternatives (though, we’re not sure what that means). And yes it will likely take some time. It seems like bioplastics are, first and foremost, a marketing means for Samsung, as the company tells us that “developing and applying new material[s] to our products adds to the cost of making the phone.”
Still, this is the company’s third bioplastic phone, so the Korean giant must be satisfied with some part of the equation. At the World IT Show in Seoul this June, Samsung said it would start selling two eco-friendly handsets: the W510, which is made out of a corn-based bioplastic and doesn't contain any heavy metals, such as lead, mercury and cadmium; and the F268, which doesn’t contain polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Samsung is trying to stop using PVC and BFRs in all of its cell phones by 2010.
Samsung Launches Software for More Efficient Phones, Gadgets
Tony Borroz - Energy
Vampire power drains, one of the ongoing bugaboos of making consumer electronics greener and more efficient, is a serious problem for mobile devices. Luckily, Samsung is on the case with what’s essentially a software hack designed to optimize the high performance features of the flash memories in smart phones, using the major mobile operating systems.
The software will boost the efficiency of devices using Windows Mobile(CE), Symbian, Linux and RTOS. The inclusion of Linux is savvy and necessary — it will also make all the open-source geeks out there happy (and give them something else to play with).
The new software optimizes data transactions within its memory chips, boosting performance through faster booting, downloading and searching — three of the most processor-heavy and therefore power hungry things you can ask a modern processing chip to do. The faster and more economically you can power up, transfer data or search through that data, the less energy you'll use. Ergo, greener mobile devices.
And don't think this applies to just phones. It also helps out digital cameras, digital camcorders, memory cards and digital TVs, as well as smart phones (including 3G phones).
For you developer jockeys, the software is expected to shorten application design times, which means you'll either get more do-able deadlines, or your project managers will just shorten timelines even more. And the cherry on top? The new upgrade is also cheaper. What could be better than that?
For us mere mortals out there, what this all will mean is that our phones and gadgets (at least the ones made by Samsung) will work faster and use less energy. And for the planet, it means things are just a little bit greener.
Kevin Rose's Next Startup to be Green Focused?
Craig Rubens - Startups
Could Kevin Rose, Silicon Valley wunderkind and founder of Digg, Pownce and Revision3, be going green? The Internet entrepreneur proposed a gadget idea on his personal blog recently (hat tip Smart Planet) that could potentially be its own cleantech startup. The idea is a power management system for devices in the home that would communicate wirelessly and be remotely controllable via the web. Not entirely novel, but Rose did offer a few new twists that could make this a killer device for eco-savvy gadget geeks. While Rose tells us he’s way too busy with Digg to tackle another startup, he hopes the idea catches on and says he’d be one of the first buy his own device.
Similar to Tendril’s recently unveiled energy management system, Rose’s proposed idea — which in an attempt to pitch to Apple he calls “iPower” — would include a base station that wirelessly communicates with a number of WiFi-enabled wall plugs to turn attached devices on and off. Rose’s value-add to the idea is integrating it with your phone’s GPS. By occasionally pinging your phone’s GPS, the system would know when you’d left home, prompting it to, for example, turn off the lights that you left on. And you could control the system remotely over the Internet through either your phone or computer.
Rose’s idea sounds like a good partnership with smart-charging startup Green Plug. Green Plug’s chips keep track of a device’s power needs and can cut power to a device once it’s charged. Green Plug CEO Frank Paniagua recently told us that his company is hoping to partner with consumer electronics OEMs to get its chips into devices and chargers. If Green Plug’s chip sets could be upgraded to talk wirelessly, you could have smart electronics that not only monitor energy use but would react to your presence, no extra plugs or base station needed.
For those who impressed friends by controlling your iTunes from your iPhone imagine being able to turn your lights on and off with the swipe of a touch screen.
Tesla's Ze'ev on CARB's "Misguided" ZEV Mandate
Craig Rubens - Policy
Tesla’s president and CEO Ze’ev Drori has exercised his civic duty via the age-old agent of democracy — the strongly-worded letter. Drori posted a letter on Tesla’s blog to Mary Nichols, Chairperson of the California Air Resources Board, that vehemently disagrees with the Board’s decision to slash the zero emission vehicle mandate by 70 percent.
Critics say that at the behest of large automakers, the Board drafted a new mandate, which requires a mere 7,500 ZEVs on California roads between 2012 and 2015. The ire of Drori’s letter boils down to his assertions that the board is “misguided” in its fact finding process, which led to the “erroneous” conclusion that an electric vehicle wouldn’t be commercially available until 2012. Drori is quick to point out that Tesla is already delivering ZEVs and lists Nissan, Daimler, BMW, and Mitsubishi as other automakers who have announced plans to sell ZEVs in California by 2010.
But Drori has some advice for CARB — the mandate is not beyond redemption. Drori lays out four essential amendments that he says the Board needs to make to truly foster the manufacture and adoption of zero emission vehicles in California:
- Increase, not decrease, the minimum number of Pure ZEV required in Phase III (2012-2015).
- Eliminate the substitution of Pure ZEVs with Enhanced AT-PZEVs.
- Set the minimum ZEV requirements on a yearly basis rather than for three years, thus preventing manufacturers from getting an additional three year grace period and eliminating "blackout" years.
- A complicated credit system differentiates the way “intermediate vehicle manufactures” and “large vehicle manufacturers” can redeem and trade gold credits, earned by putting zero emission vehicles on the road. Drori wasnt to change the expiry system on these credits so that manufacturers of pure ZEVs can make full use of those credits and not be forced to sell them at steep discounts because of their short lifespan.
The Board will probably repeat the same mistakes it made back in the 90s that were so well documented in Who Killed the Electric Car?. But Drori’s letter shows that startups are indeed paying attention to policy and are trying to have their voices heard in the system.
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