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1. The Daily Sprout
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2. Could Japan's Kyushu Become an EV Hub?
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3. Nissan Going Electric in China
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4. Smart "Power Web" Is a $65B Market: Report
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5. Michigan Governor Looking for A Better Detroit?
The Daily Sprout
Katie Fehrenbacher - Misc
Sun Shining In India: Azure Power, a solar developer in India said it has raised its first round of financing from Helion Venture Partners and Foundation Capital — peHub.
Extreme Makeover, Nuclear to Green Data Center: “Web-host company 1&1 this week announced plans to build one of Europe’s largest datacenters within a never-before-used nuclear fuel facility called New MOX.” — Infoworld.
Auto Makers Grilled Over Bailout: A congressional hearing portrayed the auto makers as “short-sighted”; tell us something we don’t know — CNNMoney.
There’s Still Money Out There for Hybrid EVs: Hybrid-electric vehicle drive system maker ISE completed a $17.5 million Series D equity investment from Siemens Venture Capital, Macquarie Clean Technology Fund, DTE Energy Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners and NGP Energy Technology Partners — Green Car Congress.
Could Japan's Kyushu Become an EV Hub?
David Ehrlich - Energy
New York’s Ener1 today announced a deal with Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power to develop rapid recharging stations for electric vehicles. Ener1 said that Kyushu Electric has already done work on an advanced rapid charging stand and plans to customize the system with a battery pack from Ener1’s lithium-ion battery subsidiary, EnerDel. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
With a rapid recharge system, Ener1 said drivers can plug in and recharge up to 80 percent of the vehicle’s battery capacity in under 20 minutes. Kyushu Electric serves more than 8 million customers on Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, which includes the cities of Nagasaki and Fukuoka.
Ener1 and Kyushu Electric plan to move quickly on the systems, with the first integrated charging station from the two companies due to be available by March 2009. But additional details weren’t disclosed, so it’s not clear how many, if any, of the new charging stations will be set up on Kyushu.
There are already some significant players in the electric car-charging field, with California’s Better Place holding talks this week with the governor of Michigan. Better Place, which is developing its own car-charging network, is already working on projects in Israel, Denmark and Australia. Better Place’s vehicle partner, the Renault-Nissan Alliance, also has a project in Japan, in the Kanagawa Prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest island, as well as deals in Portugal, France, and the state of Tennessee in the U.S.
Ener1’s deal with Kyushu Electric comes just a few weeks after the company made another move in Asia. In October, Ener1 took an 83-percent stake in South Korea’s Enertech International, a producer of lithium-ion battery cells. Ener1’s EnerDel unit has worked with Enertech before, supplying prototype and preproduction battery systems for Norway’s Think Global, which is working on an electric vehicle to be launched this year.
In addition to lithium-ion batteries, Ener1 also has operations in fuel cell development and nanomaterials.
Nissan Going Electric in China
David Ehrlich - Automotive
Japan’s Nissan Motor is heading to China with new plans for electric vehicles. The president of the car maker’s China division says that the company will start selling electric cars in the country by 2012, according to Bloomberg.
The news comes the same day that Detroit’s Big Three are in Washington to get more money for their faltering businesses, suffering in part from a dependence on sales of the now-unpopular gas-guzzling SUVs.
At the Guangzhou International Auto Show today, Yasuaki Hashimoto, president of Nissan Motor (China) Ltd., said that China is one of the most important markets for electric cars. According to Bloomberg, the Chinese government is helping to push more environmentally friendly cars in the country by cutting taxes on fuel-efficient vehicles and plans to support domestic research in greener cars.
Nissan already has some significant electric vehicle deals lined up with its French partner Renault, under the Renault-Nissan Alliance. The Alliance is working with California’s Better Place, a car-charging network developer, on projects in Israel, Denmark and Australia, and has also cut deals of its own with Portugal, France, the Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan and, in the U.S., Tennessee. More deals could be on the way; the governor of Michigan met with Better Place in Israel this week.
The battery packs for the planned Renault-Nissan electric cars will come from Automotive Energy Supply, a joint venture between Nissan and NEC. The cars are expected to hit the road in Israel and Denmark in 2011, and Australia the following year.
In August, Nissan unveiled an all-electric prototype based on its Cube model, but at the time the company said the production version will have a unique bodystyle and won’t be based on any existing Nissan models. Renault also showed off its electric concept car in October, based on the Renault Kangoo.
Smart "Power Web" Is a $65B Market: Report
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
There’s at least one good outcome of the current power grid being inefficient, wasteful and unintelligent: The market opportunity for a smarter power grid will create a $65 billion industry by 2013, according to a new report out from Lux Research.
Lux’s definition of the “power web” market includes smart-metering hardware and software, networking technologies, energy storage (including batteries for both the grid and electric vehicles), flywheels and supercapacitors, and alternative grid-connected power sources, including fuel cells; the definition excludes renewable generation systems like solar, wind and tidal power, or the electric vehicles themselves.
As utilities in the U.S. are set to add nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030, spurred by state mandates, the grid will need an upgrade to withstand the change. A recent report from the North American Electric Reliability (NERC) said that a lack of investment in the proper transmission infrastructure to accompany the increase of green power will result in an unreliable power grid. The Brattle Group predicts that to build out the power grid, including transmission lines, will need a $2 trillion investment, and Al Gore is calling for an investment of $400 billion over 10 years to build a national smart grid.
The bulk of the $65 billion market identified by Lux will be made up of energy storage and alternative grid power. We’re thinking batteries, particularly the ones found in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, will consist of a significant part of that estimate (Lux is getting back to us on that). In comparison, the market for smart-metering hardware and software and for networking technologies — which commonly are thought of as “smart grid technology” — is relatively small; Lux predicts it will grow to $4.7 billion in 2013, up from $2.7 billion this year.
Michigan Governor Looking for A Better Detroit?
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
Could Detroit be the first region in the U.S. to sign on with Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure startup Better Place? Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm is certainly giving appearances that she’s looking into the idea of how the electric charging and battery swap stations would work in Michigan. Electrifying Detroit, if not Michigan as a whole, could be an interesting option, considering the tumultuous times and the questions over the auto bailout.
This weekend Granholm travelled to Israel and met with Agassi and took a well-photographed ride in one of Better Place’s electric vehicles. Granholm blogged about the trip as well, and of the meeting with Agassi said:
We want to reduce our state's and our nation's dependence on foreign oil, and the advanced battery has the potential to do just that. We [She and Shai] talked about future partnerships that might be viable for Michigan, and in Michigan, we know that new energy means new jobs.
Building out Better Place across Michigan probably wouldn’t make sense, given that the state has low population densities in many northern regions, but setting up the system in just Detroit could give the almost 1 million population city a new electric option. Then again Detroit residents have one of the lowest median incomes according to the U.S. Census, so they might not be eager to snap up high-end electric vehicles. The big auto industries aren’t that keen on the idea of Better Place, either — with General Motor's vice chairman Bob Lutz actively making negative comments about the startup. So, we’re not sure traditional Detroit is ready for the idea.
Last month, Better Place announced that it is heading Down Under to deploy its electric car infrastructure in Australia, which is the third partnership the startup has signed after Israel and Denmark. But Better Place seems to be itching to find a pilot site in the U.S. to prove the business model can work stateside; Agassi said last month at a talk in San Francisco that for just California, the infrastructure setup would cost $1.5 billion, or about two weeks of oil imports. To set up the entire U.S. with the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, it would cost $100 billion.
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