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1. Can Oakland Startup Veranda Become the Apple of Solar?
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2. Changing World Technologies: Teetering on the Brink?
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3. Daily Sprout
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4. Senators Grill Google, Regulators on Smart Grid Rollout
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5. Sixtron Targets Solar Makers Squeezed by Silane Costs
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6. SunEdison Seals $20M for Solar Farms as Rivals Sell Their Assets
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7. Tendril Dials Up Cell Phone Energy Tool
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8. eSolar Moves Into Indian Market With $30M Deal
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9. For "beyond the curb" recyclers, a snag: Those plastic roundups won't be back soon
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10. Just the facts about compostable plastics; Portland's new fact sheet might help
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11. Not just green jobs, but a green job fair -- coming in March
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12. Happy two millionth call, Metro recycling hotline
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13. How students would spend Portland State's sustainability cash
Can Oakland Startup Veranda Become the Apple of Solar?
Jennifer Kho - Energy
Apple has developed a reputation for sleek, hip and user-friendly computers and electronics. Now, Veranda Solar, a Portland, Ore.-based startup developing small, easy-to-install solar-power systems, says it wants to become the Apple of consumer solar products.
How so? Instead of focusing on a new solar chemistry or production technology, the company hopes to differentiate itself with its aesthetics, appeal and ease of use, CEO Capra J’neva says. “We interact with real people to create our products, so we are reducing market risk by understanding the real needs of people who will buy [them],” she told us last week.
The Veranda Solar system “will appeal to the type of people who like Apple products,” J’neva said, though the company is also focused on the subset of those Apple aficionados who want to live a more sustainable lifestyle and do something positive for the environment. But unlike Apple, Veranda plans to offer affordable prices.
Founded in December, the startup is designing solar-power systems, made up of small (about 24-inch and 60- to 70-watt) panels with rounded corners, that consumers can install themselves. Veranda’s systems, based on prototypes that were developed at Stanford University with SunPower Corp., will fold flat — making them easy to ship — and snap together. The systems will include the panels, inverter and everything else needed to deliver power into a home, and will be certified to plug right into a standard wall outlet, J’neva said. The idea is that customers will be able to install them with only a screwdriver, mounting them on roofs, windowsills, balconies or walls.
From the photos, the prototype panel designs look a bit like a four-leaf clover and a lily pad. “We were wanting to create a solar panel that was not intimidating to people, and our target market likes the rounded corners,” J’neva said. “It’s huggable.” But don’t expect the final design to look just like the prototypes. The company is now optimizing the panels for manufacturing, and that’s likely to encourage less roundness, meaning they’ll probably more closely resemble the smaller of the two prototypes, she said. “Obviously, we don’t want to waste that much glass, either,” she added.
The company, which presented at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week, is seeking $1.5 million to bring its systems to the market, starting with the West Coast. Veranda already raised seed funding in the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s Picnic Green Challenge business-plan competition, when it won a second prize of €100,000 (about $123,000) last year.
The company plans to use its current round of funding to finish its third prototype, get Underwriters Laboratories certification and begin production. In spite of its panels’ different shape, Veranda says they can be made using existing equipment and processes. “We are not taking a 2-inch sample of solar-cell material and trying to scale it to production, requiring huge investments in capital equipment and research,” J’neva said. “Because we’re not a risky lab project, we expect we can bring [our product] to market later this year and make a profit within three years.”
Still, a new shape does bring a certain element of risk, said Travis Bradford, president of solar-research firm Prometheus Institute. “Any time you change your form factor, you have to change your approach to distribution and integration and maintenance,” he said. “That is a seriously nontrivial set of activities.” But the idea of making solar more attractive is an important one, he added. “A lot of people share an intuition that that is necessary and will occur, and nothing jumps to mind as a shining example of success yet.” he said. “Somebody’s going to sell sexy solar. The current crop isn’t that pretty.”
Veranda expects its systems, which include a panel, an inverter and cables, will start at $600 — or about $400 for just the panels, J’neva said. Veranda expects to sell systems at home-decor and home-improvement stores such as Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and Home Depot, as well as through utilities, direct sales and solar-specialty businesses. The company forecasts it will net $140,355 in sales from 300 customers this year and turn a profit in 2011.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Changing World Technologies: Teetering on the Brink?
Josie Garthwaite - Energy
The next step was supposed to be an initial public offering, which CWT said would enable it to fund operations through the rest of 2009. The company’s last filing with the SEC, which noted net losses of $18.8 million for the first nine months of 2008 and an accumulated deficit of $117.8 million, indicated CWT would face a massive struggle to stay afloat without raising money in the public markets.
Well, as we reported earlier this month, the IPO plan is off. And today, according to local media from Carthage, Miss., home of CWT’s sole production facility, the company asked its main supplier, Butterball, to stop shipping feedstock.
Note, I’m not talking about cellulose or corn. CWT takes unwanted (and otherwise wasted) turkey guts, feathers and other poultry remains off Butterball’s hands and uses them to make fuel, fertilizer and specialty products in Carthage Industrial Bottoms. Or rather, it did — until today.
According to Carthage Press, workers at the plant (run by CWT subsidiary Renewable Environmental Solutions) were asked to attend a “rapid response” meeting, and they expected cutbacks, at best. The Press quotes Jasen Jones, director of the Joplin Workforce Investment Board office:
"We don't have any official information from the company, just that there is some type of reduction taking place and that came from an employee who called us," said Jones. "There is some type of reduction going on, but we don't know if it is a closing or just a reduction of workforce.”
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Daily Sprout
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
Tesla Goes to Canada: Electric sports car maker Tesla Motors said it will start taking orders from Canadian customers today and begin delivering cars in the fourth quarter of this year. — Press Release
Toyota Pins Hope on Hybrids: Toyota expects to sell 15 percent more hybrid vehicles in Europe this year compared with 2008 and plans to offer a hybrid version of every model it produces by 2020. — The Guardian
Climate Midterms: European Union officials are urging the Obama administration to adopt midterm targets for greenhouse gas reductions ahead of the international climate talks in Copenhagen. — New York Times
Show Some Skin: NASA and Cisco plan to jointly develop an online platform called “Planetary Skin” that will capture, collect, analyze and report data about environmental conditions around the world. — UPI
Geothermal on the Cheap: Two recent reports, among others, suggest that geothermal may actually be cheaper per-kilowatt-hour than every other source, including coal. — Scientific American
Senators Grill Google, Regulators on Smart Grid Rollout
Josie Garthwaite - Policy
At a hearing about smart grid technology held today on Capitol Hill, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s deputy director, Patrick Gallagher, summed up the big unknown for policymakers and potential smart grid players when he said: “The question of timing is front and center for all of us right now.” It’s certainly front and center for members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, who heard testimony this morning from government agencies, trade groups and Google on “the process of smart grid initiatives and technologies.”
The lawmakers grilled not only Gallagher, whose agency has been tasked with coordinating development of an “interoperability framework” for smart grid technologies, but also representatives of federal and state utility regulators and the DOE, the GridWise Alliance and Google. “We’re playing a little bit of catch-up here,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, noting that Congress had started looking at smart grid development back in 2007. At this point, she said, “We’re at go.” So when will we see results?
According to Evan Gaddis of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, standards could be developed in six to nine months. And NIST’s Gallagher said that, working with private sector groups like NEMA, “initial drafts” of a comprehensive framework could be completed by this summer.
Asked whether NIST is the right entity to coordinate the effort, Gallagher said, “Yes, but not in the sense that we’re a smart grid agency waiting to be deployed.” Indeed, more time is needed. And while some aspects of the framework could take mere months to develop, he said more complicated sections could take “considerably longer.”
Google’s role in all of this seemed to be promoting open standards as a way to spur innovation (Exhibit A: PowerMeter) — and urging policymakers to have data ownership rules on the books from the get-go. Former NASA astronaut Edward Lu, a program manager for Advanced Projects at Google, emphasized that data collected by smart meters “rightfully belongs to consumers,” and so they should decide what happens to it. “Policymakers should provide clarity on ownership of data as the smart grid is built out.”
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Sixtron Targets Solar Makers Squeezed by Silane Costs
Jennifer Kho - Big Green
Sixtron Advanced Materials, a company that has developed an anti-reflective coating system for solar cells, said Tuesday that one of the world’s top three solar-cell-manufacturing-equipment suppliers has agreed to buy multiple coating systems with the aim of making all of its manufacturing lines “Sixtron compatible.”
The Montreal-based company’s system, called SunBox, enables companies to deposit anti-reflective coatings without using silane, the gas usually used to accomplish this task. That could help give customers an edge, as some industry insiders have predicted that a shortage could be on the way. Thin-film manufacturers use a good amount of silane, with the gas making up 3-6 percent of a panel’s bill of materials, according to Linde Electronics; as thin-film production ramps up, some in the industry, including traditional PV makers, have already reported price increases for the gas.
Although others in the industry expect silane prices to fall soon, manufacturers may also want to avoid using it because it’s a volatile gas that requires cumbersome safety equipment and procedures and can cause costly disruptions, due to unintended fires and worker injuries, Sixtron said. The SunBox — which the company describes as the size of a large refrigerator — eliminates the need for silane in monocrystalline solar-cell factories (which make up 80 percent of the solar market), saving manufacturers millions of dollars in silane infrastructure, including gas handling systems, monitors, blast walls and bunkers, Sixtron said.
Removing this “silane tax” can cut the manufacturing-equipment costs by up to 50 percent for the largest solar-cell makers, the company added. The gas produced by the SunBox deposits anti-reflective coatings with efficiencies “on par” with silane, the company claims, and the gas can also replace aluminum in another part of the process.
Sixtron said its customer has bought the SunBox systems for testing and design purposes, so it can make sure its future equipment lines are completely Sunbox ready, and may one day also decide to become a SunBox distributor. The company called the deal “a major validation,” demonstrating that a top equipment supplier expects high demand for the SunBox among its customers.
Sixtron didn’t disclose the name of its big customer, the size of the deal or the number of units included in the sale. But the world’s top three photovoltaic solar-cell manufacturing-equipment suppliers are Applied Materials in the United States, and Roth & Rau and Centrotherm in Germany, according to a VLSI Research report released earlier this month.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
SunEdison Seals $20M for Solar Farms as Rivals Sell Their Assets
Josie Garthwaite - Energy
Raise money, or sell your assets. Those are the options many solar companies are facing these days as looming oversupply and the global economic crisis threaten to shake out the sector. Today, solar service provider SunEdison said it managed to close a $20 million deal with Union Bank last month to finance to two projects. SunEdison announced today that the deal helped finance a 1.7 MW photovoltaic farm in Rifle, Colo., (concept plan shown below) and a second 1.1 MW project. SunEdison has already completed both projects, according to spokesperson Rob Wyse.
The financing announced today comes on a much smaller scale than SunEdison’s previous deals: The company raised $161 million last spring for operational costs and won contracts for PV farms on the scale of tens-of-megawatts. Union Bank helped finance an 8.2 MW photovoltaic system in Alamosa, Colo. project in 2007. Of course, the economic climate has changed since then. Financing for large-scale solar projects is harder to come by today than even last year, when SunEdison began raising this latest round.
As a result, we may see more companies taking the consolidation route. Lux Research forecast last fall that solar’s weakest players would fail or be acquired in 2009. Earlier this month, solar installer groSolar acquired the residential business of Borrego Solar Systems. Yesterday, Spain-based solar developer Fotowatio announced that it will buy most of the assets of San Francisco’s MMA Renewables, and Optisolar hawked its project pipeline to First Solar.
Graphic courtesy Rifle, CO Official Website — Long-Range Planning
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Tendril Dials Up Cell Phone Energy Tool
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
Home owners can use the mobile app, which is now available to customers of select utilities, to see their home energy consumption in real time, view dynamic pricing changes, and control connected appliances and thermostats remotely. Tendril is working on adding text-message updates, more graphs like those the company features on its web site, and carbon footprint info.
OK, so it’s a nice idea and a slick-looking tool, but at this point it can only going to be used by a very small number of early-adopter energy-geeks. That’s partly because it has to be used in conjunction with Tendril’s home energy management product, which is largely being used in only a few pilot trials with utilities. Tendril has one commercial rollout with Houston-based utility Reliant, and is planning more soon — but utilities are notoriously slow moving and at this point are the gatekeeper to greater adoption. Tendril could one day offer its product straight to consumers, but it is opting for the utility-route for now.
The other reason that Tendril Vantage Mobile won’t likely see much use for quite some time is that consumers are still just starting to use the mobile web to do things like search, IM, and use social network services. So a more complex service like managing energy consumption via mobile will remain far too complex for the average cell phone user. In addition mobile applications are notoriously hard to get consumers to download, and without some kind of partnership with a cell phone carrier or phone maker (most of which aren’t as friendly to third-party developers as Apple and its iPhone are), getting the software onto the customer’s handset will prove difficult also.
But beyond those technical and market hurdles, Tendril has actually done something very cool. The Tendril Vantage Mobile was developed based on a mobile platform API that it is now opening up to third-party developers. That means developers will be able to create alternative mobile applications using Tenrdil’s energy data. It’s a similar strategy to the one Google is taking with its online energy management tool PowerMeter, and Google plans to offer that API to third parties in the future. Offering an open API can lead to more innovation, and potentially a tool that could prove popular enough to even help proliferate Tendril’s home energy management system.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
eSolar Moves Into Indian Market With $30M Deal
David Ehrlich - Big Green
eSolar, a startup that claims to leverage algorithms and software to bring down the cost of solar power thermal plants, has signed its second licensing and investment deal in as many weeks. These deals prove promising for the startup as the company has been pretty quiet about the details of its technology. The Pasadena, Calif.-based solar thermal developer said today that India’s Acme Group has signed an exclusive agreement to build up to 1 gigawatt of solar thermal power in India using eSolar’s technology, with Acme making a $30 million equity investment in the solar startup.
Acme, which has interests in wireless telecom infrastructure, energy, and wastewater treatment, will build, own and operate the solar thermal plants, and eSolar said Acme has already signed power purchase agreements for 250 MW of power. Construction of the first 100 MW is expected to start later this year, with the entire 1 GW to be built over the next 10 years.
The agreement marks eSolar’s first international licensing deal, and the solar thermal company, backed by Idealab, Google.org, and Oak Investment Partners, is eager for more. “We are committed to working with the very best partners, such as Acme, to scale deployment as quickly as possible around the world,” said Bill Gross, CEO of eSolar and founder and CEO of Idealab, in a statement. He told the Green Wombat blog that eSolar would like also to license its technology in Spain, Australia and the Middle East.
Last week, eSolar signed another deal with Princeton, N.J.-based NRG Energy, with NRG putting $10 million into eSolar in return for rights for up to 500 MW of projects in development in California and the Southwest U.S. One of the projects in that package is eSolar’s deal from last year with Southern California Edison for 245 MW of solar thermal power in Antelope Valley in Southern California. That plant is expected to start operations in 2011.
eSolar, which uses concentrating solar power technology, is already at work in Antelope Valley, building its first commercial demonstration plant in Lancaster, Calif. The 5 MW plant will have a field of sun-tracking mirrors that reflect the solar heat onto a thermal receiver that’s mounted on top of a central power tower.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
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