Energy Storage - the next "next big thing"

I had a great time at the ESA conference in Charlotte. The energy storage industry looks, to me, like renewable energy did in 2002. I think people are starting to understand that in order to meet the RPS targets that many states have demanded will require massive deployment of storage resources.

However, in other ways, it's not clear that this is like 2002 at all. It's more like solar in 2004 or fuel cells in 1996. There is so much interest in different technologies and everyone is trying something new. Just like solar has concentrating thermal-2-axis fresnel, dish (2-axis parabolic), 1-axis fresnel, 1-axis parabolic, monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, front contact, back contact, triple junction, CIGS, thin film, concentrating PV, and many others, and just like fuel cells had companies developing PEM, phosphoric acid, solid oxide, direct methanol, molten carbonate and alkaline cells (and others if you start getting into metal air batteries), storage is seeing the same explosion of choice.

The established players are the battery companies. NJK, in Japan, has been selling Sodium Sulpher (NaS) for years to firm renewable capacity (due to policy decisions). Recently IPO'd A123 is moving from its transportation focus to sell utility scale battery solutions. Several other battery companies were also there.

The newcomers included flow batteries and flywheels. Beacon Power, of course had a strong presence, but it was neat to see other developments in flywheels by other early stage companies present.

With the ARRA funding now deployed and the ARPA-e storage grants getting underway, it will be very exciting to see what happens in the next 12 months. Given how things have been over the last 18 months, finding a sector that looks like 2004 is welcome indeed.

Rooftop Wind Gets Traction

Welcome back! It's been a wonderful Christmas break, but it's time to get back to work. The new year has started quickly at Starfish, with my time being split between tying up loose ends left from before Christmas, to getting a jump on a bunch of new opportunities.

However, there is a business concept I've seen a couple of times now that I think is interesting. It is a concept that I had the privilege to hear about when I was at AeroVironment (AV's Architectural Wind product is shown below, and another company, Marquiss Wind Power's product is shown to the right), and this is rooftop wind. Similar to rooftop solar, in that this allows the power generation to be close to the source (and therefore compete economically with the retail price of electricity, not the wholesale price). In addition the units, if designed well, allow the building to function as a wind funnel, channelling (and accelerating) the wind over the top of the building. The turbines can be located in a zone of far greater wind-speed than the typical mean windspeed at ground level. This gives the turbines decent performance.


The final benefit is that the turbines can improve the visual aesthetics of a building. This is something that AV has done in spades with the ravenclaw look to their product. What's brilliant about this is that the initial reaction to having a bunch of turbines on a roof of a building is concern about noise and the building visuals. With an attractive design, the concerns over aesthetics are addressed, and the turbines allow a building's "green cache" to be much more easily seen and promoted.

In the last year in Australia I have seen not one but two companies with a similar concept. Both had different product designs, one using a vertical axis. These products had some cost and reasonable payback difficulties. However, I thought, at the time, that it was interesting to see more work done on the concept.

Well today it was announced that Marquiss Wind Power raised $1.3m from Velocity Venture Capital and Strategis Early Ventures. They have a ducted fan design (shown above and to the right). They are in their early design phases and their product looks a lot like the earlier iterations of AVs product, but there is room for improvement. Like many other cleantech products widespread adoption will be determined by the economics, so lifetime reliability, and $/W will be key.


However, I'm interested that four different firms (at least) are pursuing this concept. I imagine that will actually be good news for these companies. When trying to prove a new concept to skeptical customers, a number of competitors in an early growing market can be a good thing as competitors are far more likely to validate the concept than compete for a specific sales dollar. So, it will be interesting to see if more companies jump in this space, and to see whether or not the economics can succeed.

Renewable Energy Conference

I just returned from Bendigo, Victoria. Bendigo is a regional city within Victoria, and one of the more successful regional centres. The conference showcased how regional Australia could benefit from a growing renewable energy industry. This reiterated how climate change should not be discussed in terms or "economy" vs "environment". Rather, addressing the full costs of carbon emissions will create tremendous opportunities for economic growth (especially in regional areas) addressing the problem.

I got to give an interesting presentation, and if I figure out how to host files off of Blogger, I'll try to post it here. A number of people seemed to really like it. I may have ruffled a few feathers in the fuel cell industry when I said that it was very difficult to make investments in the fuel cell space now after the tremendous exposure that fuel cell companies received in the last ten years. However, with my years at Ballard, and my exposure to Plug, UTC, GM and other fuel cell developers, I still am pretty confident I know what I'm talking about.

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) interviewed me for their radio segment, which discusses portions of my talk. If you want to listen to it, it's listed here. It was great to see the enthusiasm at the conference, and it was good to meet up with some entrepreneurs. If anyone reading this blog has any questions about anything I mentioned, be sure to leave a comment and I'll try to respond.



Note: the picture and the interview (I imagine - although I suppose I provided most of the content) are copyright the ABC.

Renewable Energy Conference

There is an interesting conference happening in September in Bendigo, Victoria, regarding renewable energy. I'm going to be speaking at the conference, giving an overview on how venture capital investing works, and some of things that VCs are looking for in new investments. If you think this might be interesting, I recommend that you look into it.

A national conference on ideas, examples and action being presented in Bendigo, Victoria on 16th, 17th and 18th September 2007.

Regional Australia is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of alternative energy supplies. Energy for transport as well as industrial, mining and agricultural development is essential if regional Australia is to develop and continue to play its role in the long term success of the Australian nation.

The conference presentations will address questions such as:

· what are the most likely sources of renewable energy for regional Australia?

· what is the state of development of these different sources?

· how accessible are these energy sources to people in regional Australia?

· what needs to happen to make them readily available? and

· what can regional communities do to assure their access to renewable energy?

Keynote presentations from government, business, academic and community leaders will be complemented by a focus on practical renewable energy initiatives.

For more information or to download a registration brochure: www.renewableenergyconference.com.au

Rural folk

I have noticed something with the upcoming Cleantech revolution, and that is a growing power placed with one of this nation's earlier entrepreneurs (as well as the entrepreneurs of my previous nation - the US - and my previous nation before that - Canada). I'm talking about farmers and ranchers. These people don't get much thought these days (at least by city-dwelling folk like me), and in many ways I think that they've been sold short. I've noticed in all three countries that I've lived that there is a divide between rural and urban dwellers. That being said I must say that the divide in Australia is the narrowest, and in the US it is the widest (so much so, that the political spectrum is almost neatly divided between urban "blue states" - Democrat supporters, and rural "red states" - Republican supporters). As an aside, I've noticed that the split is nearly reversed in Canada - the rural people are left wing, and the urban people are right wing (sort of), but I digress.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, with much of the "new economy" hoopla over the past ten years many people in the media have given the impression that entrepreneurs are all engineering students between the ages of 20 and 30 starting up web-based businesses. Everyone else was dismissed as "old economy". Agriculture wasn't even hip enough to be classed as "old economy", it was simply dismissed entirely. Growing up in Saskatchewan (a very farming oriented, rural province of Canada) I saw a lot of this. However, farmers are some of the most entrepreneurial people I know. The original pioneers who populated the West of Canada and the US (and rural Australia) endured risks far more than any dot.com entrepreneur, and the farmers of today know what it takes to run a business, and are very innovative.

What I think we'll see happen, and in many cases I have begun to see it already, is the entrepreneurial spirit of farming will resurge and play a major role in Cleantech. At least three huge sectors of Cleantech are a good fit for rural life - wind farms, solar farms, and biofuels production. Farmers are used to using their land as a business to make money, and I've seen many cases where farmers were eager to set up a wind farm or grow biofuel suitable plants. There is a lot of push in the rural community to make big on the opportunities presented by Cleantech, and given the entrepreneurial history required of rural life, I think it is somewhat exciting that this group, often overlooked by traditional urban, tech-oriented folk, could have a resurgance and play a major role in this new wave of tech adoption.