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Greentech Media (GTM) Research has partnered with the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) to collect and publish quarterly data and analysis on the U.S. solar market. As part of this process, GTM Research is conducting our first quarterly Installer/Integrator Survey.

If you or your organization were involved in any PV, solar heating/cooling, or solar pool heating installations during the first half (January-June) of 2010, please help us by filling out the survey. All survey responses will be held confidential and reported only in aggregate. We will ensure that no data items can be traced back to individual respondents.

The brief survey should take less than five minutes of your time and will be vital in helping GTM Research and SEIA to better understand trends in the U.S. solar market.

Please go to http://www.gtmresearch.com/survey, fill out the survey, and you will automatically be eligible to win an iPad Tablet Computer.

For additional information on the survey or the SEIA/GTM Research partnership, please contact surveys@greentechmedia.com.

France wants to avoid becoming Spain.

The Ministry of Sustainable Development is expected to cut the country's generous feed-in tariffs by 12 percent beginning September 1 in an effort to rein in demand and curb spending, according to analysts and news reports from France.

The cuts -- which were expected some time in the future -- will dampen demand and put pricing pressure on solar modules, according to a report from Aaron Chew at Hapoalim Securities. Still, the impact will be muted. Germany represents a far bigger market and the imposed and anticipated impact of its feed-in cuts are already baked into industry forecasts. Italy is also a larger market than France. A looming global surfeit of components will also likely have a larger impact. At most, France will account for 5 percent of shipments this year. 

Nonetheless, the cuts will hurt demand and remind investors and others about the volatility of solar market. The spread between the feed-in tariff, essentially the price that French utilities pay for solar energy, and the price of conventional electricity right now is somewhat large. The feed-in tariff ranges from 31 to 58 Euro cents per kilowatt hour, depending on the type of installation and module. The 58 cents a kilowatt hour tariff, paid to those with building-integrated photovoltaic panels (BIPV tiles), has been one of the highest in the world. The cuts will impact ground-mounted systems and BIPV, but not small residential systems.

Regular electricity runs 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour. (France gets the lion's share of its power from nuclear plants -- the cost of many of the plants have been amortized and the government owns the bulk of the stock of Areva, the large nuclear power plant operator. So, no, it's not a completely fair world.)

The high price for solar energy prompted a surge of demand. Chew earlier predicted that France would install 398 megawatts of solar this year and government numbers indicate that the total could be 85 to 90 megawatts higher than that. France had already cut the feed-in tariff once this year.

Cutting the tariff, of course, would dampen demand. Spain still remains the example not to follow in this department. Back in 2008, Spain offered generous tariffs, prompting a mad dash of solar module makers to the Iberian Peninsula. When the country suddenly pulled back, a glut resulted.

Everything is heavy.

The average turbine tips the scale approximately 200 to 400 short tons. In all, a turbine might incorporate 8,000 components.

A 64-watt solar panel, barely enough to power an incandescent bulb, can weigh 24 pounds.

With diesel and port fees steadily rising, that heft could translate directly into manufacturing jobs. To some degree, it’s happening already. Nine of the top-ten wind companies have current or announced U.S. facilities for building towers, blades, or nacelles. Foreign and domestic solar companies have erected module facilities in Oregon, California and Arizona.

Is this the start of an industrial Renaissance? Maybe, maybe not. Labor rates remain comparatively high in the U.S. Several nations also offer tax holidays, subsidized land and sparkling new industrial parks that often beat anything federal and state governments can put together. Then again, the U.S. remains a leader in intellectual property control and novel business models.

Read more on this topic in a joint effort by General Electric Ecomagination and Greentech Media, and join the conversation here.

When it comes to residential energy efficiency, there's so much more that can be done than just switching off the lights. While a recent study suggests that the average American is completely clueless about what those other actions are, the government is funding pilot projects to show that substantial savings in new and retrofit homes is possible.

General Electric is teaming up with utilities, builders and academic researchers to take home efficiency to the next level by using smart appliances and lights coupled with renewable resources to make homes 30 percent to 70 percent more efficient.

The test houses, part of the Department of Energy's Building America Program, will be a mix of retrofit and new construction. The goal of the DOE program is to cut energy use by 30 percent, but GE and its partners think they can reach 70 percent if rooftop solar panels are added to the mix.

The homes will also be equipped with GE's NucleusTM Home Energy Manager, a Wi-Fi and ZigBee enabled home energy communications device that plugs into the wall, takes energy readings from smart devices and displays them on a web portal (and the requisite iPhone app).

GE will track the cost of the upgrades and/or installations for each house, along with the energy data and also the related utility cost savings.  The estimate is that the savings could be more than $800 for the average U.S. home, but that is after the return on investment.

The Building America team, led by ConSol, an energy consultancy headquartered in Stockton, California, also includes: Washington State University, Arizona State University, University of California at Davis, Ennovationz, Sacramento Municipalities Utilities District, San Diego Gas & Electric, Arizona Public Service, Pulte Homes, Salt River Project and Bank of America. BIRA was one of 15 teams selected to receive funding from the DOE through its Building Technologies Program.

The project received $5 million from the DOE to test these technologies, but the money could also just as well be spent finding out what it takes for people to adopt the retrofits in the first place.

Currently, only about one-third of the appliances on the market are even Energy Star certified, and far fewer are smart appliances. Before appliances, HVAC systems are the biggest energy hogs in the home, anyway, so installing a smart dishwasher isn't exactly going to lead to a revolution in energy use.

Even if the savings are small, upgrades and retrofits do cut down on kilowatts used. The DOE has identified that retrofitting a home is one of the most effective ways to achieve energy -- and cost -- savings, but that advice seems to fall on deaf ears. Now the DOE just has to figure out how to get the public to listen and care about the results of projects like this one.

This really is something old, new, borrowed and blu.

Blu Homes, which bought the home designs and other intellectual property from Michelle Kaufmann Designs last year after that company ran out of money, has come out with its first modular homes. The Glidehouse starts at $360,000 (without the real estate) and comes in a variety of configurations: two bedrooms, three bedrooms, fireplace or not, and a choice of finishes.

The company will then follow up with the Breezehouse, with a different floor plan, in early 2011. Both homes are based on original designs from Kaufmann.

The homes are made with green building materials like bamboo and can be equipped with solar panels. What really makes the homes green, however, is how they are built and their energy efficiency. Rather than build the home on location on top of a foundation, the homes are built in factories. Factory building leads to less waste and lower transportation costs. The homes can also be sealed like a drum with precision construction -- the wood isn't sitting outside where it can warp or gather mold spores -- and foam insulation, leading to lower energy bills in the future.

Modular homes are often status symbols in countries like South Korea or Japan. See a video here of Panasonic's model green home. In the U.S., however, 'modular' means 'mobile home' to most consumers. That may change. Zeta Communities in the S.F. Bay Area is building modular town homes, while Project Frog is erecting modular schools and public buildings. Zeta last year opened a factory capable of producing 300 to 400 homes annually.

Design-wise, these modern homes are pretty snazzy. Here's a video of Zeta's beta in Oakland. West Coast Green will showcase a number of home innovations next month in San Francisco. In terms of cost, the homes also end up being roughly on par with conventional homes; Kaufmann went through a lot of the issues in this interview.

Still, most of these companies face an uphill battle. The mortgage debacle has lead to declining real estate prices and a plethora of homes waiting for buyers. Modular home builders have also had a difficult time raising money from investors.

German mechanical engineering giant ZF has decided the opportunity in wind power is too good to resist. "We're in the process of building a new production facility to produce gearboxes for wind turbines in Gainesville, Georgia," Bryan Johnson, ZF's Marketing/Communications Manager for North America, said. "It's a brand new business for us."

The U.S. has slowly but steadily been giving birth to a wind power manufacturing industry over the last five years. Though the failure of Congress to sustain policy support for the renewables this year has slowed the process, plans for the new ZF facility are moving ahead, thanks to a purchase agreement with the world's biggest turbine manufacturer.

ZF has, for the last few years, put the company's century-long experience in mechanical engineering to work doing service and maintenance for wind projects in Europe. What the group saw in the field led them to the conclusion they should be making turbine gearboxes.

"We have nearly a hundred years of experience making transmissions for almost everything that moves," Johnson said. "Looking into a new market like wind power is a natural fit."

"ZF saw an opportunity," Elizabeth Umberson, President of ZF's Commercial Vehicle/Special Driveline technology Division for North America, explained. "Reliability is the key issue with wind turbine gearboxes, and ZF's automotive background has enabled us to make improvements in design, testing, and production."

Having seen the wisdom of and opportunity in getting into wind, ZF, one of the world's leading automotive driveline and chassis technologies suppliers, chose Gainesville for the site of its first turbine gearbox plant because it has been making transmissions and axle systems there since 1987 and is confident it can fill out the new facility's anticipated 200-person workforce with quality employees.

Though ZF will not elaborate on the details, the company also liked the deal Gainesville offered. "Any manufacturing facility that is bringing jobs is going to receive some type of incentives from local government," was all Johnson would say. "We don't disclose that."

Asked if what Gainesville offered was part of ZF's decision, Johnson said, "Of course they were part of the decision-making process. Any kind of incentive that is going to save the company money in their manufacturing and construction process is an influence." The city's offer was not the only factor, he added, but it was clear that getting in on the birth of the U.S. wind manufacturing industry will require localities to put something on the table.

The if-you-build-it-they-will-come theory seemed to have worked. Denmark-based Vestas, the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturer, has chosen ZF to supply its gearboxes. "Vestas' suppliers are selected based on a combination of price and quality. The goal is to increase business-case certainty," Aili Jokela, Vestas' American Wind Vice President for Communications, wrote by email about the ZF selection. "The gearbox is a major component in achieving this goal."

The gearbox is located in the turbine's nacelle, the one-car-garage-sized operations box at the top of the turbine's tower. The blades and rotor, affixed to the front of the nacelle, exert over a million Newton meters of torque at 12 to 20 revolutions per minute. The gearbox ramps that into 1,500 to 2,000 revolutions per minute, allowing the nacelle's generator to produce electricity.

Vestas is confident ZF will deliver. "ZF has high quality and productivity standards," Jokela added.

This ZF-Vestas deal is an example of the need turbine makers have for a U.S. supply chain. The company is "working with domestic suppliers such as ZF," Jokela wrote, "to drive down the cost of energy -- measured both as the price per megawatt-hour and the environmental footprint -- to ensure wind can compete favorably with traditional energy sources."

According to Jokela, Vestas isn't yet certain what the scale of the purchase will be or where in North America the ZF gearboxes will be used. "We are still evaluating which specific sites and turbines they will be used in."

ZF's Johnson said Vestas has time to allocate its supply. Though the $90 million Gainesville facility's 200 employees will eventually make 2,000 gearboxes a year and construction has already started, the plant is not expected to be completed before January 2011. A year of testing will follow. Commercial gearbox production will only begin ramping up sometime in 2012, when ZF engineers are certain gearboxes can be produced to the company's exacting standards.

"It's a new process, it's a new facility, it's a product that requires precision and quality," Johnson said. "We'll ramp up as our process gets better."

Johnson agreed the deal with Vestas was key. "To invest in a new business, you have to find a partner to work with." On the other hand, he doesn't expect Vestas to buy the plant's full-capacity output. "Long term, we hope to sell to other customers."

What happens in the long term, many in the renewables industries are now saying, depends greatly on what policies they can coax out of Congress. ZF's Umberson had a broader and more optimistic perspective. "Although the U.S. has not adopted a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES), many states have a goal of increasing the amount of energy derived from alternative and renewable sources," she pointed out. And furthermore, she added, "We believe that Congress can still encourage growth of alternative energy through infrastructure projects and tax credits for production."

During the 1990s, a new category of enterprise software called enterprise resource planning (ERP for short) spawned several multi-billion-dollar stalwarts, including SAP, PeopleSoft and Salesforce.com.  Early on, the market was fragmented, with several vendors fighting for dominance.  Over time, the market consolidated as Oracle and SAP emerged as market leaders that bought competitors, integrated product lines and merged workforces. 

The same thing is about to happen in the soft grid (Editor's note: 'soft grid' is GTM's terminology for the software layer of the smart grid) -- specifically, in meter data management, which pertains to software that automates billing by collecting and cleaning time interval power consumption data from millions of households, as frequently as every 15 minutes.  All of this data must be processed daily within tight time windows.  It's a keenly competitive software game where the ability to scale is assumed, and backup and security are table stakes.

Keep in mind, though, that with advanced meter data management we are talking about one vertical industry, specifically utilities.  ERP, on the other hand, applies to just about every industry and organization under the sun.  Nonetheless, meter data management systems sit at an important strategic intersection of the smart grid. 

Utilities must do a top-notch job of managing meter data in order to realize their smart grid hopes and dreams.  In its ideal form, meter data management is more than just a database -- rather, it's an organization-wide, technology-enabled business process.  The meter data management process makes data beyond the sub-station available to any person or application within a utility that needs it, as well as to the customers themselves.  But doing this isn't easy.  A sophisticated and robust technology infrastructure is critical.  Technology wonks use the term 'service-oriented architecture' (SOA) as shorthand for a modular, distributed architecture that hides locations, packages functions, and provides powerful application-level communications.  Utilities are late to the smart-grid party, and MDMS offers a way for them to catch up.

Several of the more sophisticated MDMS vendors profiled in GTM's recent Meter Data Management
Research Report (to which I contributed as chief researcher and analyst) offer sophisticated middleware and data management services.  This gives utilities a way to build smart applications and turbo-charge their IT infrastructure at the same time.  Examples of this approach include enhanced outage management, more accurate market settlement, and residential demand response.

Established vendors include in this space include Oracle, Ecologic Analytics, Hansen Technologies, NorthStar Utilities, eMeter, Aclara, and Itron.  Interesting up-and-comers include Energy ICT, Telvent, and OSISoft.  Interestingly, SAP has jumped into the fray, as well -- but with a de facto marketplace standards initiative called the Lighthouse Council and a framework for transporting meter data called meter data unification standard (MDUS).   Collecting, cleaning, and fixing meter data is a basic process that all support, though in different flavors and at varying levels of abstraction (translation: graphical consoles for building business rules).  Look beneath the covers, though, and significant differences emerge.  Turns out that the MDM platform that a utility chooses -- and MDM should be considered a platform, as opposed to a mere application or database -- will go a long way toward determining, how, what, when (and whether) a utility will be able to rollout that oh-so-interesting smart grid application they've been dreaming about.

Here is a partial chart from the report.

 

Looking for slick market settlement?  Consider Aclara.  How about scalability to tens of millions of meters?  Ecologic Analytics and Itron are worth a closer look.  Sophisticated middleware tools and utility frameworks?  Put Oracle and eMeter on your list.  Pulling a mish-mash of data from different meter brands and collection schedules and protecting and enhancing SAP utility applications?  Find some friendlies on the Lighthouse Council to talk to.  Are you pondering real-time data management and distribution operations integration? OSISoft or Telvent might be your ticket.  Are you a mid-market or municipal utility looking for an all-in-one solution and having trouble getting MDM hotshots to answer the phone?  Try NorthStar Utilities.  Looking to package commercial demand response and energy management sophistication for the residential world?  EnergyICT provides some interesting possibilities.  A global company that can jump through market-specific hoops, hit tight timeframes and process data every hour?  Place a call down under to Hansen Technologies.

We haven't even started talking about meter brands like Elster, Landis + Gyr, Itron, and so forth.  Each has its own wrinkles.   Better ask about that too, since each requires its own quirky data and function mapping layer to plug into -- another MDM Day 1 job.

By the way, none of this is probably going to work without a friendly integration team - either from the vendor, or more likely, a third-party expert like Accenture, Enspiria or Bridge Energy Solutions.

What's the bottom line?

1. There are no turnkey smart grid solutions

2. There are as many different flavors of MDM as there are vendors selling systems

3. If you do MDM right, a world of opportunities await you, but, if you do it wrong, you'll have a hard time preparing a billing statement, let alone a fancy new smart grid application.

4. Most importantly, the winners of the MDMS wars will have their solution in the heart of their client's smart-grid IT infrastructure.  Not a bad place to be, especially if you want to provide more value-add and sell more stuff.

Which vendors will win?  At this point, the only sure bet is Oracle.  Turns out that almost every vendor uses Oracle as their database engine (save Telvent and OSISoft, both of which use OSISoft's PI real-time database; Itron offers your choice of Oracle or SQLServer).  So for Oracle, it's not a question of whether the cash register will ring with the next MDMS sale -- it's a question of how much money they'll make.

Trina Solar (TSL) announced its second quarter results this morning.

Trina (market cap of $1.56 billion) builds silicon-based solar products for commercial, residential, industrial, and electric utility applications. Customers include Conergy, Corporación Zigor, SKR Energie, and Schüco International.  The firm has a vertically integrated business model from the production of monocrystalline and multicrystalline silicon ingots, wafers and cells to the assembly of modules. The firm also has a stellar earnings record -- the stock has surpassed the consensus estimate in each of the past four quarters.

Strong results and optimistic outlooks have dominated the news from solar companies of late, and Trina's second quarter earnings call was no exception. (See our recent reports on Suntech and Yingli's record-setting second quarterly updates.)

Here are the highlights from the call:

• Second quarter shipments were 223 megawatts (guidance of 200 to 205 megawatts), an increase of 15.7% sequentially and 248.7% year-over-year
• Second quarter revenue was $370.8 million, an increase of 10.1 percent sequentially and 147.2 percent year-over-year 
• Gross margin was 32.1 percent, above the guidance of high 20s 
• Net income was $38.7 million
• For the third quarter of 2010, Trina expects to ship between 250 megawatts to 260 megawatts of PV modules.
• For the full year of 2010, Trina expects total PV module shipments to be between 900 megawatts and 930 megawatts, compared to its earlier guidance of between 750 megawatts to 800 megawatts, an increase of 126 percent to 133 percent from 2009

Trina sees "increasing evidence that strong demand for our PV products will extend well into 2011."

Trina's most recent news includes:

• Signing of a sales agreement to supply solar modules to SunEdison, a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials. Under the terms of the agreement, Trina Solar is expected to supply SunEdison with approximately 35 megawatts of PV modules over the remainder of 2010. The modules are expected to be utilized by SunEdison for projects in North America and Europe.
• Signing a 45-megawatt supply agreement with Southern California Edison, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States. The modules are expected to be used in SCE's large solar photovoltaic installation program.

Trina's stock price was down two percent in early trading this morning.

Auriga's Mark Bachman on Trina Solar:

• Trina Solar has one of the most profitable crystalline-silicon business models and we believe our assumptions could prove conservative in the next year.
• Our model uses shipments of 863MW in 2010 and 1,011MW in 2011
• ASPs modeled down 12 percent year-over-year. Our 2Q10 module price is $1.70/W, which declines to $1.44/W in 4Q11. 
• We have modeled modest gross and operating margin declines in 2011. While we believe that several of the assumptions presented above may prove conservative, we are also trying to present a credible argument for investing in shares of TSL. In short, the solar industry continues to be subsidized, which results in constant pressure on both ASPs and cost reduction targets. Our new model has Trina's shipment forecast growing slower than the industry growth rate of 25 percent, coupled with ASP declines outpacing cost reduction efforts. The result is a declining margin structure year-over-year, but one that results in increasing profits on higher revenue. We find it reasonable to assume that margins should contract as the industry matures.

MiaSole, which makes copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar modules, has signed a contract to deliver 7.5 megawatts of panels to juwi Solar in Germany. The panels will be placed on roofs and in the ground at utility-scale solar parks in that country.

MiaSole delivered 1 MW to juwi in the second quarter.

The company is one of the Big Five in CIGS startups. MiaSole, NanoSolar, Solyndra, HelioVolt and Solopower all burst onto the greentech scene in the middle of the decade and all have had to face production snafus, management changes and delays. Even worse, the price of silicon solar panels has dropped considerably since then thanks to the rise of Chinese solar manufacturers, a glut of raw materials and a worldwide economic downturn. Meanwhile, cadmium telluride specialist First Solar says it has dropped its prices production costs to 76 cents a watt, creating a formidable barrier for new companies trying to break into the market.

Still, CIGS vendors say they will undercut the price of silicon solar panels and produce products that can generate more power than cadmium telluride and/or amorphous silicon panels at equivalent or better prices.

Miasole started shipping modules commercially this year and rolled out ambitious goals. The plan is to ship 22 megawatts' worth of panels this year and, by the end of the year, to boost the efficiency from a mid-year level of around 10.5 percent to 13 percent.

“At the end of the year, we will ship 13-percent-efficient modules. That is not a maybe. By the beginning of next year, we will have 13-percent-efficient modules right on the edge of the poly guys and we think we have the ability to be in the same league as the First Solar guys in terms of cost,” CEO Joseph Laia told us in June. "The only reason we are not shipping these modules today is that we are awaiting the completion of our UL certifications.”

The heart of MiaSole's technology is a fast, complex machine for sputtering CIGS solar cells. The company has also come up with an interesting packaging technology -- think of Lego bricks -- for snapping solar cells together to make a module.

The juwi deal indicates that, yes, MiaSole is cranking out the modules. However, the juwi deals announced to date account for just under 40 percent of the production goal, so we await other announcements.

(DALLAS – Aug. 24, 2010) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that the results of air monitoring data found no health risk from short-term or long-term exposures to hexavalent chromium or other air toxics at Eden Gardens Elementary School in Shreveport, La

(DALLAS– Aug. 24, 2010) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that the results of air monitoring data found no health risk from short-term or long-term exposures to hexavalent chromium or other air toxics at Eden Gardens Elementary School in Shreveport, La

Consumers Energy drastically cut the budget and scope of a smart meter plan in Michigan, calling the project a casualty of hard times.

The company is cutting out smart gas meters as part of its strategy and reducing its smart meter budget from $900 million to about $500 million over the next five years. This scale-back is part of a wider decrease in spending overall, which is down from $7.2 billion to $6.4 billion.

"We have made some modifications. We are still committed to a smart grid program. We are taking out smart grid gas meter modules, they are no longer part of our plan," said Roger Morgenstern, a company spokesman for Consumers Energy.

Basically, this means that 1.7 million gas customers won't get smart meters, but the 1.8 million electric customers will. Eventually, the gas customers may get included, but this is the plan for now.

"We see more benefits with the electric smart meter because they are more dynamic," said Morgenstern.

However, Michigan residents won't start getting their electric meters until they are deployed in 2012.

It's unclear how this will affect Elster's EnergyAxis for Smart Grid Field Pilot or General Electric's first smart grid program to use high-speed wireless with WiMAX.

"We are not discussing plans with our proprietary vendors," said Morgenstern.

These cutbacks notwithstanding, Consumers Energy is still one of the largest investors in Michigan, even in this economy. The $6.4 billion in funding will go towards the implementation of the smart grids, wind generation, other renewable investments, and on-going maintenance and gas utilities.

The recession is putting extra pressure on smart grid spending nationwide.

"We have seen cutbacks happening in Boulder, Colorado in a reaction to Xcel Energy's pioneering pilot project [with a total cost of about $100 million if completed]. There was some push-back in Baltimore Gas & Electric service territory as well," said Massoud Amin, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. 

The smart grid will save customers money down the line. As we mentioned before in our "Baltimore Moves Forward" post, customers will save $2.6 billion over 15 years.

Amin reminds us of the daunting costs that smart grid implementation is likely to require over the next two decades. However, the $150 billion cost of implementing the smart grid should not overshadow the obvious reasons why we need a smart grid in place: more than 4% reduction in energy by 2030 would save the nation $20.4 billion, reduce the cost of outages by $49 billion per year, reduce emissions by 12% to 18% per year, and increase the nation's energy security.

As Consumers Energy and other utilities become focused on deploying smart meters, Amin worries that the overall goal of enabling the smart grid is being overlooked. Either way, he certainly doesn't want to have to cope with the increasing risk of blackouts.

If you attend enough events covering venture capital investment in greentech, the same, sometimes obvious, themes start to repeat.

• VCs need to invest in billion-dollar markets.
• Teams are important.
• The company has to be capital-efficient, but paradoxically, must be able to scale big, quickly.

This week's VC event was entitled "Unique Challenges and Prospects for Early-Stage Clean Technology Start-Ups" in Palo Alto, California and was put on by the good folks at Agrion.  Here are some highlights:

Cleantech Open, Brian Payer, Co-Founder

• If you haven't changed your business plan in two or three years, then something is wrong.

Battery Ventures, Mike Dauber, Partner

• "I can't think of another industry more focused on cost [than energy].  No one makes a decision on Facebook based on cost."
• "If you need hundreds of millions of dollars, it might be a good company -- but it's not a VC-fundable company."
• "You can't talk about cleantech as if it were one giant market."
• Licensing revenue models might be good interim plans, but not as the basis for a long-term business.
• Battery Ventures is an investor in Redwood Systems, an LED lighting and lighting control firm.   In Dauber's words, "The lighting value chain is very complicated and highly controlled; a startup must show incentives to everyone in the value chain."
• Battery Ventures attempts to de-risk its deals by tranching the financing with milestones and technology proof-points.

CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund, Susan Preston, General Partner

• Preston plugged a congressional bill currently being worked on -- a tax credit for early stage investors.
• CalCEF has a bit of a different spin on the venture model; their LPs have access to CalCEF deal flow.
• In Preston's words, there are "lots of cleantech areas flooded with companies with no differentiation."
• Project financing has become the "second gap" in greentech financing.
• Preston pointed out the need for entrepreneurs to be coachable -- the team has to understand how to adjust and how to take advice. The team has to understand their strengths and weaknesses.  "These are tough areas for an entrepreneur to do self-evaluation."
• Preston and CalCEF are "looking hard" for an investment "at the intersection of energy and water."

People Power, Gene Wang, CEO

• Wang is a "five-time startup guy" and four-time CEO.  
• "Energy management is just like device management," according to Wang.  We'll investigate this claim in an upcoming article. 
• Wang's current company, People Power, is in stealth and has something to do with "the internet of things."  He's looking to manage every device in every building.
• In his view, ZigBee won't work well enough for intra-home communication.  Their open-source product has better range.
• People Power just received a $1 million SBIR grant and is looking for a Series B. Wang said that it's been very challenging to raise money despite the "capital efficiency of the firm" and the "great team."

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Joshua Raffaelli, Associate

• Raffaelli has some energy experience, is focused on innovation and business models, and specifically looks at the demand side -- data center efficiency and innovative financing models.
• DFJ portfolio firm Scientific Conservation is less focused on energy efficiency and more on determining how a building is performing through predictive analytics.
• DFJ has "run into some trouble in the biofuel space" as have many other VC firms.
• "The problem is that energy in the U.S. is cheap."
• Raffaelli is on the board of troubled PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) company, Renewable Funding.  In the face of conflicting legislation, the firm and the board are now confronted with the need to conduct a search for other opportunities.  

Moderator: HelioPower, Ty Jagerson, Executive Vice President  

• HelioPower will double revenue this year from $10 million to $20 million.
• Jagerson named AQT as a company of interest because of their use of off-the-shelf equipment to build CIGS solar cells. 
• He also cited Array Converter as a potentially disruptive solar electronics firm in the 'inverterless' solar space.

ZSW, a German research institute focused on solar and hydrogen, announced today that it has developed a copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cell to convert 20.3 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity.

This nudges past the record set by ZSW in April with a cell with a 20.1 percent efficiency. The April mark broke a longstanding record held by NREL and also market the first time CIGS got past the 20 percent barrier.

CIGS cells and modules constitute almost an invisible fraction of a percentage of the solar market. Many CIGS companies, in fact, have just begun to sell modules and a large number are still in the pre-commercialization state. Nonetheless, that may change over the coming years. CIGS cells can operate at higher efficiencies than cadmium telluride and amorphous silicon solar cells, and ultimately they should cost less to produce than crystalline silicon cells. CIGS can also be placed on flexible substrates, hence the building integrated CIGS modules coming from Dow.

ZSW estimates that generic CIGS panels will rise from 11 percent efficiency today to 15 percent over the next few years. Solar power plants built around thin-film solar cells will rise from the teens today to 30 percent by 2012, the company added.

Meanwhile, it was 50 years ago that construction began on Geysers, the world's first commercial geothermal plant, according to the Geothermal Energy Association. Geothermal now provides over 3 gigawatts of power in the U.S. at 77 locations in nine states. Approximately 188 new projects are now underway. New techniques such as hot dry rock technology and better drilling techniques may expand geothermal from its traditional base on the Pacific Rim and Nevada to other locations in the U.S. Geothermal is cheaper than other renewables and can provide consistent baseline-quality power, say advocates.

Speaking of dirt and dust, Boston University researchers say it might be possible to commercialize a self-dusting technology employed by NASA for its solar panels on the Mars rover mission. In a nutshell, an additional, electrically sensitive layer is added to solar modules. Sensors detect dust pile-up and then trigger an electronic charge to sweep it away. In principle, it's like an electronic hand buzzer, but for solar panels. Debris does chronically reduce the efficiency of earth-bound solar panels. Earth panels, however, also suffer from water spots, snow and bird droppings. Thus, expect to see an intense cost/benefit/functionality debate here. Still, for utility-scale plants in the desert this could be handy.

Finally, Japan's government is considering subsidizing energy efficient power plants. Considering that some of the large conglomerates are also the largest producers of solar panels and efficiency equipment, this will ideally help employment, as well.

It's taken nearly two decades, but a technology that is getting quite close to electronic paper will soon hit the market.

Qualcomm late this year will begin to produce Mirasol displays -- thin, energy-efficient displays that show video and reproduce color accurately -- and ship them to consumer electronics manufacturers. By the first quarter, expect to see e-readers containing the 5.7-inch screens. See a prototype in the photo.

2011 will also likely see the debut of thin, energy-efficient color screens from Prime View International, which bought E-Ink last year. The Liquavista screen from Philips may also appear in products by then. LG Display is also working on a version of color paper, according to research firm DisplaySearch.

What's the big deal? Consumers are now watching video and playing games on their smart phones and tablets. That sucks battery life. Batteries improve in performance very gradually and they weigh a lot. Thus, manufacturers and consumers are faced with a trade-off between functionality and mass. To get to that futuristic world where we can replace paper with electronics and reap the benefits in recycling and energy efficiency (i.e., reducing pulp processing), the screen has to change.

These displays help crack that problem because they use far less power than an LCD. The Mirasol displays, for instance, do need internal light bulbs like LCDs. Instead, Mirasol relies on reflected, ambient light. The images are created by a MEMS -- a microelectromechanical device, or a microscopic machine -- that moves pixels back and forth to create red, green or blue. The principles behind the screen derive from how humans perceive the bright colors on butterfly wings.

An e-book containing a Mirasol screen will last three times to five times as long on a battery charge than a typical e-book, says director of marketing Cheryl Goodman. A screen sized for phones will come out next.

The e-books are also quite thin and functional. Goodman let me play with one. (Video coming soon.) It was light and I couldn't detect "hot spots" on the back surface. More importantly, the video was clear. I even tried it in different conditions -- near the window, under the table, facing away from the window. The image stayed somewhat clean and I didn't get much glare. By contrast, LCDs are notoriously difficult to see outside.

E-Ink screens contain balls that are now painted black on one side and white on the other (the color version will presumably have red, green and blue). When an electric charge passes through, the balls arrange themselves accordingly, sort of like a card section in a stadium. Liquavista (best name, arguably least developed technology) relies on electrowetting, a process based on the fact that water repels oil.

It's been a long road. Both E-Ink, which was soaked in millions in VC funds, and Iridigm Display, which got acquired by Qualcomm in 2004, came out of MIT in the mid '90s. And before the companies were formed, the research had already been taking place. Philips has shown Liquavista prototypes at shows for years.

Qualcomm, by the way, will actually make the Mirasol screen. Usually, Qualcomm just licenses its intellectual property. But with a new product, quality control is key.

I met with Qualcomm at the Emerging Displays Conference in San Jose. Other highlights:

--OLED screens accounted for $900 million in revenue in 2009. By 2018 it should grow to $8 billion, according to DisplaySearch. OLED lighting could grow to $6.2 billion by then.

--Corning is touting a green laser. A green laser is the signature product of Soraa, the Khosla Ventures-backed startup now headed up by former Intel marketing guy Eric Kim. That's a really, really bad sign for Soraa.

--Small projectors weighing less than a pound and curbing power with LED lights will be a big deal. 142 million units will ship in 2018.

 

Electric cars and biofuels seem to inhabit different universes these days. Nissan, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, BMW, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Daimler, among others, have unfurled plans to release affordable electric cars over the next few years. Thousands of consumers have plunked down deposits on upcoming models and states have sought grants to pay for charging networks.

Meanwhile, biofuel startups, struggling for cash, have branched into jet fuel, chemicals and food additives as a way to get revenue to come in the door.

The liquid versus electrolyte debate, however, is not over, according to Britta Gross, the director of the energy systems group intelligence center at General Motors. Gross' job is to examine the costs/ benefits of the different propulsion systems for cars and the corresponding infrastructure. (Editor's Note: we spoke to her right before GM filed for its IPO.)

Liquids, in fact, may well play a larger role on weaning the world of gas in the foreseeable future, she said.

"Ethanol and biodiesel will be important as the lowest cost, near-term solution," she said. "The whole ethanol strategy is a get-off-gas strategy."

Why? Her thoughts below. You may not fully agree -- and as a GM employee, Gross is gung-ho on the plug-in Volt, too -- but it's an interesting point of view.

--Ethanol cars cost less. A car that runs on E85, or 85 percent ethanol, only costs a few hundred dollars more to make than an equivalent gas car. "The incremental cost is affordable," she said.

Producing a similar green diesel adds $3,000. A plug-in hybrid or all-electric costs even more to manufacture. Advantage: ethanol.

--Electric cars will likely always carry a premium. Batteries for electric cars now cost around $700 per kilowatt hour. While that price will decline, it won't be a precipitous decline.

"Some people are unrealistic" when it comes to estimating how cheap lithium batteries will become, she said. "Batteries are going to end up being more expensive than combustion engines."

--Ethanol is already in the market and so are the cars. "Ethanol has displaced 5 percent of the gasoline consumed in vehicles," Gross pointed out.

--The historic dearth of ethanol stations may change. Most of the ethanol in the U.S. gets sold in E10 form, which contains 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gas. In 2008, former GM CEO Rick Wagoner lamented that most flex-fuel car owners filled up on gas because only 1,400 ethanol stations existed in the U.S. compared to 170,000 gas stations.

The demand for E10, however, has largely been saturated, but the U.S. biofuel mandates call for more fuel.

"We will be at the point soon where we have to put corn ethanol into E85 soon," she said. "We have to have a place to put corn ethanol . (...) We have got to build more E85 infrastructure."

--In terms of cost, ethanol (with subsidies) is comparable to gas in many regions where the pumps exist. (We didn't discuss alternatives to corn, but most cellulosic ethanol makers are still in the prototype production stage at best, so it will be a while.)

--Infrastructure in many ways could be easier and/or more cost-effective to build for ethanol than for electric cars. A filling station can serve hundreds of customers. By contrast, most consumers will charge electric cars at home, which means that most charging stations will serve only one family. GM deliberately designed the Volt so that it could be charged with an ordinary household outlet.

Meanwhile, the public charging networks needed to complement home charges could become a costly bust. Consumers will expect them, and even expensive high-speed chargers. Nonetheless, because consumers may not use them much, these chargers could wind up becoming feel-good but ultimately empty gestures.

"There is a lot of money going into what seems to be a lot of infrastructure that could be under-utilized," she said.

--Range anxiety isn't dead yet. Most electric cars will be small- to mid-sized cars, partly as a result of this.

--Hydrogen isn't dead yet, either. It won't happen tomorrow, but GM (like Honda and Toyota) still sees promise in the concept. A hydrogen car is effectively an electric car that can be refueled in minutes and go further before refueling. Hydrogen is also arguably clean. Even if the hydrogen comes from cracking methane, a hydrogen car will emit 60 percent less greenhouse gases than a conventional gas car, she said.  And like ethanol, a charging station can serve hundreds of consumers.

Sydney, Australia-based BT Imaging (BTi), just announced a $3.8 million A2 funding round from Applied Ventures, the VC arm of Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) along with investors Allen & Buckeridge and Uniseed.

BTi improves solar cell efficiency and manufacturing yields by applying luminescence imaging to the manufacturing and testing of silicon wafers and solar cells. 

BTi’s luminescence-imaging systems are used for research, product and process development, production manufacturing inspection, and quality control of silicon blocks, wafers, photovoltaic cells and PV modules. Originally developed at the University of New South Wales, BT Imaging's photoluminescence technology allows real-time electronic inspection of every wafer or solar cell processed through a manufacturing line.

BTi started out building R&D and lab equipment for testing crystalline silicon solar cells.  After shipping a number of R&D tools, the feedback was that customers needed in-line tools.  "In-situ monitoring capability is truly a gaping hole in PV manufacturing," said a colleague at an emerging PV cell firm. Applied Materials became interested in the firm when they saw the inline tools at a recent trade show in Shanghai. 

I spoke with Wayne McMillan the VP of Sales and Marketing.  He spoke of the improvements that BTi enables in efficiency and yield from silicon blocks all the the way to the module level.  McMillan claims that their tools are much faster and provide much better resolution than existing solutions.

The photoluminescence technology used by BTi "uniformly illuminates the entire sample with Near IR laser light and generates electron and hole pairs."  As those carriers recombine, the light is collected with a special CCD-type camera.  Anything that looks dark on the image is electrically poor.

The customer is looking for flaws and defects -- crystal dislocation defects and impurities.  Dislocations can reduce absolute cell efficiency by 1 percent.  The customer can recycle flawed blocks and wafers prior to the next processing steps.

Their R&D tool is sold to ingot, wafer, cell and module makers, and about 20 have been sold so far. New 3600-wafer-per-hour tools will be introduced at Eu PVSEC in September.

But it's not the imaging that the customers really need -- it's more what you do with the data and how it is classified.  According to the VP, "In production the customer doesn't want images -- they want data and analysis."  So software and algorithms are as important as the imaging itself.

BT Imaging systems can be used to predict cell performance, material quality control, process and material faults, and for process control and debugging.  The company’s inspection and QC control systems are used by wafer and cell manufacturers in Europe, Australia, Taiwan, China, and Japan.

The bottom line according to McMillan is that "the tool helps improve efficiency and yield."

Firms like AccuStrata, Laytec, and Brightview Systems are also looking at PV cell metrology and process control, although mostly in thin film.

The company has about 30 employees, most of whom are based in Australia. BTi is using distributors for worldwide sales.

 

The city of Leesburg, Florida was saddled with some of the highest power rates in the state less than five years ago. Today it strives to be the lowest-cost retail provider of electricity in the Sunshine State. The municipal utility still has a long way to go, but it is working hard to employ smart grid technologies, from smart meters to transmission upgrades, to deliver power cheaper and more efficiently to Leesburg's approximately 20,000 residents. 

In the world of smart grid and utility deployment, investor-owned utilities snag most of the headlines, for better or for worse. But Leesburg, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando, is just one of hundreds of cooperative and municipal utilities that are making, and winning, the case for end-to-end smart grid projects.

For utilities that answer to city councils and their constituents instead of investors, there is not the drive to sell, sell, sell more power and get an instant return on investments. And yet, while large utilities like Baltimore Gas & Electric tout the savings of smart grid, they stumble when it comes to making the business case in a way that satisfies their investors, ratepayers and the public utility commission. The savings of smart grid investment are not just being talked about by smaller utilities, they are being realized.

"The munis are the ones that are the most out front," said Alan Mantooth, IEEE Fellow and Executive Director of the National Science Foundation Center on Grid-Connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems.

In Leesburg's case, they knew that just an advanced meter deployment would cut their cost. "We told our commission we're not going to increase our rates because we're rolling this out," said Paul Kalv, Electric Director of Leesburg Power.  "And we know we'll be reducing the customer charge to share those savings." So far the city has saved about $1 million.

Kalv talks a lot about his customers. When one guy complained about his smart meter, Kalv personally went over to his house to check it out. It is that sort of on-the-ground interaction that is simply not possible for the CEO of investor-owned utilities, like Florida Power & Light Company, where Kalv worked for 22 years.

 Although CEOs are not expected to make house calls, all utilities are realizing that it is bad business to fail to engage customers. The customer service chasm between big IOUs and municipal utilities is not the only reason that smart grid rollouts have gone smoother at smaller utilities, but it certainly shines as an example of what IOUs could do better. "We want to empower our consumer and reward them for energy efficiency," said Kalv.  Until recently, most IOUs did not utter the words 'empower' and 'customer' in the same sentence, at least in part because customers were only referred to as ratepayers.

The proximity to customers, and the need to keep costs down and build efficiency, is the primary driver for the smart grid investment at munis. Mantooth notes that the push for municipal utilities is often about bringing in corporate investment to cities. The cost of electricity and the ability to integrate renewables can be drivers to win, and keep, businesses in town. "These cities want to be perceived a certain way and they want to be competitive in an economic development sense," he said.

Just behind municipals are cooperatives, according to Mantooth. For example,  Hoosier Energy, a coop in Indiana, contracted GridPoint earlier this summer to help shape and shift load.  While demand response is a hot topic for all utilities, especially throughout this hot summer, Hoosier is not just using GridPoint to cut down on critical peak load, but is also investing in residential and commercial load shifting that allows its 17 members to control costs and even out load beyond just the critical peak periods.

"Don't be surprised to see munis and co-ops moving ahead of IOUs on deploying smart grid technologies and next-gen apps," said David Leeds, smart grid analyst with GTM Research.  "This will be a definite trend, as these public utilities don't have the PUC rate-case hurdle to contend with and as the ROI on smart grid investments starts to become clearer. As unexpected as it may sound -- utilities like Leesburg Electric and Hoosier Energy are actually serving to move the whole industry forward."

 

 

 

When Chris Van Buiten was at a White Zombie drag race a couple of years ago, he had a flash of inspiration when he saw the electric drag cars zip around the track in a flash. He thought: If this tiny electric car can beat this dragster down the line, what would happen if you could put an electric propulsion system in a helicopter?

That question propelled Van Buiten's curiosity when he returned to Sikorsky Innovations headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut. During a routine conference meeting, Van Buiten proposed making an electric helicopter. That fateful discussion laid the groundwork for the next two years.

Jonathan Hartman was named project manager and was put in change of developing the first electric helicopter for SI. Hartman remembers the conference room meeting well because it was where Project Firefly was born.

Soon, Project Firefly will undergo ground testing. The electric system consists of two lithium polymer batteries. The electric system sits nicely in a 1950s S-300 CTM helicopter minus the 190-horsepower four-cylinder gas engine.

Hartman said that there are no commercial uses for the aircraft and that it is the company's first attempt at learning about the electric technology in this evolving field. Still, if anyone is ever going to electrify flight, even partially, Silkorsky isn't a bad candidate. Helicopter pioneer Igor Silkorsky, who invented the first helicopter, founded the company, which is now part of mega-conglomerate United Technologies.

The most challenging part of the project was pulling all the parts together. The technologies in the engine haven't been used for aerospace before and have been tweaked so the motor runs on air-cooling instead of water. U.S. Hybrid, a company in California, tweaked the electric motors it uses in trucks and street sweepers.

Additionally, Eagle Aviation Technologies was called upon for their expertise in custom fabrication and aircraft assembly to make structural adjustments to the S-3000 CTM helicopter. The two 45Ah lithium-ion batteries come from Gaia Power Technologies.

As an unfortunate side effect of using batteries to power the helicopter, the familiar noisy engine isn't humming to let the pilot know that everything is OK. That's why SI is outfitting the helicopter with sensors and an LCD screen in the cockpit to provide real-time data to the pilot.

"By avoiding a noisy combustion engine, you lose the cues that the engine is running properly. We have a real-time health monitor, a temperature gauge, and something similar to a gas display to tell the pilot how much time is left on the battery packs," Hartman said.

To be of any commercial use, the helicopter would have to run for at least an hour. But with only two lithium batteries, it's only expected to last 15 minutes in the air. You can't just strap on more batteries, either -- for every pound you put on the aircraft, it's another pound you have to lift.

The batteries are heavy. Each battery pack weighs 1,100 pounds, so that's why there are only two in this rotor craft.

"Energy storage is the main roadblock for developing an electric-powered helicopter," Hartman said.

But who has time for the batteries to get up to speed? SI wants to develop an electric propulsion system that could work in new technologies along the way. As helicopter fuel costs soar (up 90 percent in 2008), the role of helicopters in the police force might literally be grounded due to financial constraints.

Energy storage and electric propulsion have to meet the flight requirements before a 100%-electric-powered helicopter becomes a realistic possibility.

"We are looking forward for battery technology to catch up to our aspirations, " Hartman said.

The only way to know if Project Firefly will carry its weight is to fly it.

The piloted test flight is expected later this year -- that is, if the ground tests and safety reviews run smoothly. At an airport in Connecticut, Hartman is pretty confident that Project Firefly will fly, but he knows the helicopter is limited by the existing technology.

Despite SI's impressive track record, Project Firefly might be way ahead of its time. Flying a manned electric helicopter later this year might be a one-off, but even still, it will mark the beginning of a new era in manned electric aviation.

Gas isn't the fuel for car engines. Air is.

That, in part, is the theory behind Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine, a startup that has devised a novel gas engine that increases overall efficiency by 10 percent to 50 percent and cuts down on NOx gases at the same time by changing the way air gets channeled through an engine.

Scuderi completed a four-cylinder prototype last year and in about a month will come out with comprehensive test data on how it performs. A few months after that, the company hopes to show data pertaining to how well the engine did in a retrofitted Chevy Cavalier. The car test, ideally, will also let the company demonstrate how well the improvement in efficiency translates into better gas mileage.

So far, the company has raised about $45 million and is trying to raise another $40 million, according to Bill Wrinn, director of marketing for the company.

While electric cars grab all of the headlines, efficient combustion engines may actually well play a larger role in reducing gas consumption over the next several decades. Ford has placed a big bet on its EcoBoost engine, a gas engine with some diesel-like properties that can improve mileage by 10 percent to 15 percent. General Motors, meanwhile, wants to expand the infrastructure for ethanol and E85 cars. At Volkswagen, diesel gets more enthusiasm than electrics.

Startups like EcoMotors, Transonic Combustion and Achates Power have, like Scuderi, devised more energy efficient engines and components they want to sell or license. Another Silicon Valley startup (I'm sworn to secrecy on this one) will soon come out with a novel engine for generators. Some VCs, notably Maurice Gunderson of CMEA, argue that combustion engine improvements are more realistic than electric cars.

These startups have all engaged in discussions with major car makers -- particularly Asian car makers -- but getting to market will be a tough, uphill climb. Like with semiconductor manufacturers, licensing ranks right up with terms like "audit," "colonoscopy" and "dinner theater": best avoided whenever possible. Testing and certification can also take years in cars, far longer than the testing cycle for semis.

On the other hand, various national governments have imposed new emissions standards in recent years, which may force car makers to accelerate their product roadmaps and, in a pinch, to reach out to startups. EcoMotors is already in discussions with an Asian manufacturer.  

Scuderi's split-cycle engine is a "naturally aspirated gas engine" that breathes better than normal engines, according to Wrinn. In conventional engines, pistons rise and compress air in a cylinder. Gas, heat and a spark are added to the same piston, resulting in combustion.

In Scuderi's engine, the pistons on the left side of the engine compress air. The air then travels through a passage connected to the cylinders on the right side of the engine, where the gas is introduced (hence the term 'split-cycle'). The passageway architecture leads to a significantly higher air pressure, which in turn leads directly to more fuel being burned and more energy being turned into productive work.

Inventors have tinkered with split-cycle engines since 1914. They haven't worked well because the energy in the compressed air gets dissipated before it can be used effectively. Scuderi gets around this with a set of valves and other technology that push nearly 100 percent of the compressed air into the combustion cylinder. Meanwhile, the pistons on the combustion side are synchronized with how the air will get released from the passageway. In an ordinary piston cycle, the air would expand and then have to be recompressed. More technical details can be found here.

The lower-than-average NOx emissions come because the higher pressures allow the engine to operate at lower peak temperatures. The average temperature is higher, but the peak is lower. Because it doesn't hit the same peak, the chemical reaction to create NOx doesn't spread, according to Wrinn. NOx emissions are reduced by 80 percent.

Added bonus: the engine also recaptures some of the post-compression air pressure and feeds it back into the compression cylinder to pre-compress the incoming air. This air-hybrid effect allows the engine to achieve a 50 percent improvement in efficiency, he said.

Ultimately, the company will license the design to car makers. It also hopes to come out with a diesel version: the ability to reduce NOx naturally would likely be appealing to diesel makers who now have to insert additional components or materials to tackle that job.  

Carmelo Scuderi, an engineer that worked on various defense projects for Raytheon and others during his life, came up with the design. Among other projects, he played a crucial role in developing test systems for space suits for NASA and a compressor that hindered the release of CFCs. Discovery hailed the compressor as one of the technologies that has been important in repairing the ozone layer.

He finalized the Scuderi engine design in 2001, but died in 2002. His kids are behind the current commercial push. (Side note: family affairs are big in cleantech. Rivertop Renewables, Silver Spring Networks, and Hycrete are all father-son or grandfather-son companies.)