Cleantech Update

In mid-October, President Obama moved to raise the amount of credit extended to small businesses. If Congress approves his plan, the measures would enable community banks to borrow at low rates from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It would also raise loan caps on some Small Business Administration (SBA) programs. To qualify, the banks would have to show how they would increase lending to small enterprises. The relief could not come a moment too soon. The job-creation engine known as small business has been slammed, not only because of falling demand but also because the normal flow of financing has slowed to a trickle. Small enterprises have created two-thirds of all new jobs since 1994 and they employ more than half of all private-sector employees. (The SBA's definition of a small enterprise is "an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.") In September, for the second straight month, they laid off more workers th...

Green-energy provider Lichtblick and German automaker Volkswagen are joining forces and promising to stir up the energy market with an unusual plan. Instead of relying on massive energy facilities, the average consumer may soon have a miniature power station in their basement. Chief executives of Germany's major energy suppliers usually don't have much time for their junior counterpart, Lichtblick. The Hamburg-based green-electricity provider's half a million customers may be "impressive," they say, but Lichtblick works in a niche market and is no competition for the larger companies in the industry. But things may be about to change. In the next couple of days, the relatively small company is due to reveal a new business model that could shake up the energy market quite a bit -- and not only in Germany. So, despite the fact that they currently have large power plants and considerable power over the market, things may soon turn a little less comfortable for e...

20-year fixed interest rate on SBA 504 loan projects has hit a new record low, and this is the fourth time it's happened in the last six months. I feel a bit like a broken record. Every time I turn around I'm blogging about this, emailing someone about it, or talking to another financial news outlet about it . This really is a HUGE deal. This is the first time the 20-year fixed interest rate on SBA 504 loans has dropped below 5.00% to 4.86%. The Rest @ Blue MauMau These loans can be used for comercial property purchases, including energy efficiency refinanaces. -Editor

Clean Edge Did a Cleantech Job Status Report.  Here is a summary -Editor 1 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA 2 Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA 3 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA 4 Boston-Worcester-Lawrence-Lowell-Brockton, MA-NH 5 Washington-Baltimore, D.C.-MD-VA-WV 6 Denver-Boulder-Greeley, CO 7 Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA 8 Portland-Salem, OR 9 Chicago-Gary-Kenosha, IL-IN-WI 10 Sacramento-Yolo County, CA 11 San Diego, CA 12 Austin-San Marcos, TX 13 Phoenix, AZ 14 Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI 15 Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX Solar Biofuels and Biomaterials Conservation and Efficiency Smart Grid Wind Power In Clean Edge's report, they considered the following sectors: Renewable Energy (e.g., Solar, Wind) Energy Storage Energy Conservation and Efficiency Smart Grid Devices and Networks Electric Transmission and Grid Infrastructure Biomass and Sustainable Biofuels Energy-Efficient Desalination UV Filtration Reverse ...

From the Interatinal Statesman WHAT was the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century? The motor car, perhaps, or the computer? In 2000 America’s National Academy of Engineering gave a different answer: “the vast networks of electrification”. These, the academy concluded, made most of the century’s other advances possible. But whereas cars, computers and so forth have become ever more sophisticated, power grids have remained, in essence, sets of dumb wires. Thomas Edison, a pioneer of electrification in the 1880s, would be able to run them. Power is fed into the grid from power stations in the hope that it will arrive in factories, offices and homes. To this day most utilities rely on consumers to tell them that the power is out—and may then have to put in a lot of detective work to discover the cause. This may be changing at last. A global movement is afoot to make grids “smart”. This means adding all kinds of information technology, such as sensors, digital meters an...

Thanks to Texzon Energy for puting  me onto this new program... Funding for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program under the Recovery Act totals $3.2 billion. Of this amount, approximately $2.7 billion will be awarded through formula grants. This Program was only approved three weeks ago on 9/14/09   SECO will receive approximately $45 million under the EECBG to administer to cities and counties not receiving direct EECBG allocations from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). See if your city or county received a direct EECBG allocation.   Federal Amount Available: $3.2 billion, nationally   Direct Allocations to "entitlement" Cities and Counties in Texas: $163,121,800 (Cities over 35,000/Counties over 200,000)   State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) Allocated: $45,638,100 (Cities under 35,000/Counties under 200,000)       Use of Funds   Grants can be used for energy efficiency and conservatio...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Our economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of railroads, automobiles or the Internet - the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and mints fortunes. Silicon Valley investors are pointing to something called cleantech - alternative energy, more efficient power distribution and new ways to store electricity, all with minimal impact to the environment - as a candidate for the next boom. And while no two booms are exactly alike, some hallmarks are already showing up. Despite last fall's financial meltdown, public and private investments are pouring in, fueling startups and reinvigorating established companies. The political and social climates are favorable. If it takes off, cleantech could seep into every part of the economy and our lives. Some of the biggest booms first blossomed during recessions. The telephone and phonograph were developed during the depression of the 1870s. T...

San Diego-based Achates Power has raised $12.1M in a $20M funding round. The startup's include Sequoia Capital , Madrone Capital Partners, Rockport Capital Partners, and InterWest Partners . Achates had raised $35M. It is developing a diesel engine technology that promises a 50% improvement in fuel economy at a cost hike of 30% of current diesel models. For you gear heads out there, know that fuel efficiency gains are achieved, in part, because the two-stroke engine lacks a cylinder head, an engine component that loses 8% of energy as heat. Rather, there are two pistons, which offer 2x the power density, in the engine, which is lighter and smaller than its competition. Achates has in interesting financial model - it plans to license its technology to engine manufacturers and vehicle makers for $50M, plus a 5% royalty per unit. Achates has a couple of other startup competitors including EcoMotors and Transonic Combustion The Rest @ The Alarm Clock

Miasole was founded by veterans of the hard disk industry with founder Dave Pearce who leveraged their expertise in hard disk manufacturing to introduce new manufacturing processes into the thin-film solar industry. In December 2006, the company's CEO announced that 50MW of manufacturing capacity as well as an IPO is imminent but the company failed to deliver on the milestone. In September 2007, semiconductor equipment executive Joseph Laia was brought in as CEO to move the company to volume production. The company has 40 MW of production capacity at its Santa Clara facility, and claims that as of May 2008 it was making modules at 9% to 10% efficiencies on those production tools. NREL has since independently verified two 10% Miasole CIGS modules. At this time, none of the company's founders is with the company any longer. Kannan Ramanathan, who served as chief research officer at Miasolé from 2006 to 2008 has left the company in November 2008. Dave Pearce stepped...

The RPM is a power conditioning and energy storage device. The RPM conditions 60Hz AC power by protecting against transients, surges, and load sags, and by isolating dirty loads or sources. The RPM protects against power outages lasting seconds to minutes depending on the RPM design and application. The RPM stores AC energy in the form of a ring of traveling electromagnetic waves that can be tapped instantaneously as constant amplitude and frequency, with 60 Hz AC energy available to fluctuating loads. The electromagnetic ring isolates the load from the source by instantaneously buffering against changing voltage, current, and phase. - Source, Texzon Website Tesla theorized about it, and named the concept,   2005- a Patent was filed May, 2007- The concept was presented a the Electrical Storage Engineers concention in Boston A system that can integrate with existing technologies and can act as a "shock absorber" or "elastic reservoir" is the Ring Power M...

Waste to Energy is a process that turns Solid Waste into Energy. The Originial technology used incineration in a process illustrated by this animation, but there are new technologies that are greener and more efficienct WTE other than incincineration [ edit ] Incineration Main article: Incineration Incineration, the combustion of organic material such as waste, with energy recovery is the most common WtE implementation. Incineration may also be implemented without energy and materials recovery, however this is increasingly being banned in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. [ citation needed ] Furthermore, all new WtE plants in OECD countries must meet strict emission standards. [ citation needed ] Hence, modern incineration plants are vastly different from the old types, some of which neither recovered energy nor materials. Modern incinerators reduce the volume of the original waste by 95-96 %, depending upon composition and degree ...

I found this quote from Dave on the Yale 360 Website : A recent study (2008) conducted by NREL concluded that wind costs approximately $1800/kW to install, and coal about $1830/kW, with existing air pollution control technologies. As emission controls become tighter, as they will and should, that gap in price will only widen. There are numerous other studies that reach a similar conclusion. In checking it out, I came across the NREL  Wind Partnership. The Wind Partnerships for Advanced Component Technology (WindPact) was started in 1999 to assist industry in lowering the cost of energy by designing and testing innovative components, such as advanced blades and drivetrains. These components are expected to be primary constituents of the low-wind-speed turbine. Researchers have also performed a range of systems studies as part of the WindPact project in an effort to answer questions like how big a wind turbine of the future should be and to explore the impact of rotor configur...