Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

When Inc. Magazine celebrates Green Entrepreneurs

Always interesting and funny to read these kind of rankings : the 50 green companies to track. Usually, you know what we said : "that is when your company starts to get these rewards, that you have to pay attention". Those who communicate the most, are the most visible... 

 

 

Feedbacks from San Jose Solar Power conference

At the Solar Power 2006 Conference & Expo in San Jose, the crowded exhibition hall was filled with rows and rows of all things solar. There were panels, concentrators, chargers, lights, and even a robot. And solar enthusiasts wandered through, engaging the exhibitors and exchanging ideas and business cards. The showroom closed Wednesday, but the conference continued Thursday, with “post conference” events Friday.

Solar panel maker Solon displays its solar tracking system, the Solon-mover, at the entrance to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

The company brags that the tracker is the “largest industrially manufactured ready-to-go” solar tracking system in the world, specially developed for large solar power stations and capable of supplying entire cities with solar energy. Solon claims it was the first German solar company to go public, in 1998.

 

Greg Gaucher, a technical salesperson with Menova Energy, studies Sharp’s solar concentrator. Concentrators use mirrors or lenses to magnify—or “concentrate”—sunlight onto smaller solar cells. Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp’s Solar Energy Solutions Group, says concentrators will take hold soon, becoming significant in three to five years (see Q&A: Sharp’s Ron Kenedi). Menova also makes solar concentrators.

 

Larry Anderson, left, a sales representative for Menova Energy, discusses the company’s Power-Spar PS-2 with a conference attendee from MCR Holdings. The product is a “trough style” solar concentrator, which moves on two axes to track the sun. The absorber (the bar on top) can be switched out to provide solar electricity, solar heating, or direct lighting via fiber optics, said Nathalie Bastien, a Menova sales consultant based in San Jose.

The aluminum concentrator is light and can be stamped together very rapidly, cutting manufacturing costs, she said. Ottawa, Canada-based Menova is just starting to expand into the U.S. market, and expects the Power-Spar 2 to deliver its clients a return on investment in only two to three years, she said. The company showcased a demonstration unit; the real ones are 40-feet long.

 

 Cruise Car is giving away this solar-paneled electric vehicle, called the Sunray. But don’t call it a golf cart. Technically, it’s only a golf cart if it goes less than 20 miles per hour, said Michael Margulis, a manufacturer representative based in Lakeport, California. This “low-speed vehicle” hits a top speed of 22 miles per hour—25 mph downhill, he jokes—and is street legal. It has a range of 65 miles, and can actually travel much farther if it’s in the sun, he says.

The vehicle costs $7,000, before a $1,000 federal tax credit. The non-solar version, called the Classic Golf, costs $5,500 and has a range of 40 to 49 miles. In November, Cruise Car will come out with a speedier solar-paneled neighborhood electric car, the Solar Kudo, which will retail for $9,000, Mr. Margulis said.

 

A conference goer watches as a robot demonstrates picking up a solar panel and placing it on a frame. Normally, the robot, RV40, would trim the panel to match the size of the glass that would go on top. Reis Robotics originally built the robot for automotive applications, dye casting machines, laser cutting, and so on, said Julio De Souza, an Elgin, Illinois-based field service engineer for the German firm. Two years ago, Reis created a program to apply the robot to solar manufacturing, he said.

Source : Red Herring

Certificat "Habitat Environnement" : Bouygues Immobilier s'engage

François Bertière, Président-directeur général de Bouygues Immobilier, et Antoine Desbarrières, Président de CERQUAL, ont signé ce jour un protocole d’accord par lequel Bouygues Immobilier s’engage sur la certification « Habitat Environnement permet de diminuer de 20 % la consommation d’énergie par rapport à un bâtiment construit suivant la Réglementation Thermique 2000.

Fat Spaniel Technologies (web monitoring) raised first round of financing

Fat Spaniel Technologies Inc., a San Jose, Calif.–based provider of critical IT infrastructure for the distributed generation industry, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. DFJ Element led the deal, and was joined by Chrysalix Energy. www.fatspaniel.com

Biocarb (suisse) veut s'implanter en France

Le groupe Biocarb, leader de la production et de la vente de biodiesel en Suisse, a déposé deux demandes d’agréments pour l’obtention de deux quotas de 60 000 tonnes/an de biodiesel. Biocarb projette de construire sur la plateforme chimique des Roches à Roussillon (Isère) une unité d’estérification de 120 000t/an et une unité de trituration de graines d’oléagineux pour l’alimenter. La première unité représente une trentaine de millions d’euros d’investissement, la seconde une vingtaine.
La mise en service pourrait se faire de façon progressive à partir de janvier 2008. L’unité de production de biodiesel mettra en œuvre des procédés d’estérification permettant d’utiliser aussi bien des huiles usagées que des huiles vierges (colza ou tournesol). Créé en 2003, Biocarb produit du carburant biologique selon une technologie innovante de recyclage des huiles animales et végétales. Le projet pourrait créer à terme de 30 à 40 emplois directs.

Prototype de chauffe-eau solaire mis au point à l'Université Technologique de Delft

 L'ingénieur Jeroen van Luijtelaer, lauréat l'année dernière du "Young Wild Ideas Award" du Centre des Matériaux de Delft, a présenté mi-avril 2006, un prototype de chauffe-eau solaire.
Ce projet a constitué son travail de fin d'étude sous la direction du professeur Geert-Jan Witkamp de la faculté 3ME (Construction Mécanique, Techniques Maritimes, et Sciences et Techniques des Matériaux) de l'Université Technologique de Delft.
Ce chauffe-eau solaire se compose de deux cylindres. Le cylindre interne est partiellement rempli d'eau et couvert d'un revêtement à spectre sélectif. La rotation des deux cylindres provoque une force centrifuge et empêche l'air froid confiné entre les deux cylindres de s'approcher du cylindre intérieur. "Les tests montrent que l'efficacité de l'appareil peut atteindre 61%. Ce rendement est nettement plus élevé que celui des chauffe-eau conventionnels, qui subissent toujours une perte de chaleur liée à la circulation de l'air entre le côté intérieur chaud et le côté extérieur froid", souligne van Luijtelaer. Le prototype le plus récent a une surface de cellule solaire de 0,6 m2, ce qui permet une production d'environ 0,56 kW/m2 de vapeur à 100°C à une température ambiante de 7°C.
Le coût des matériaux de cet appareil est inférieur à 100 euros, il serait donc meilleur marché que le chauffe-eau actuel d'après l'ingénieur. Mais ce prototype doit être encore perfectionné.

 

Source : Bulletin Electronique

GE's plan to produce power with SOFC

One of the most efficient ways to produce power at future coal-gasification power plants is with solid-oxide fuel cells, which use the hydrogen from the gas stream to generate electricity through chemical reactions. This is more efficient than simply combusting the gas stream from coal gasification. And unlike other types of fuel cells, the solid-oxide variety can operate at very high temperatures and efficiencies, and be scaled up to provide cities with power.

But among the various challenges to developing the technology, manufacturing cost has been a potential deal breaker. Now, researchers at GE have demonstrated a manufacturing method that assembles layers of ceramic and electrolyte materials cheaply so that the final product can be built for about $800 a kilowatt, which starts to approach the $500-to-$550-per-kilowatt cost of building a conventional gas-fired power plant.

GE's six-kilowatt prototype achieves 49 percent efficiency in converting fuel into electricity, which compares favorably with the 35 percent efficiency of conventional coal-burning power plants. "I do believe GE has established a new state of the art," says Wayne Surdoval, technology manager for fuel cells at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is funding this project and others aimed at producing better solid-oxide fuel cells. "The bottom line," he adds, is that the GE prototype "is a particularly inexpensive fuel cell to make. Basically, you are using simple manufacturing techniques using fairly inexpensive materials in the cell."

Surdoval likens the process to making pizza dough. Three sets of materials--representing the two electrodes and one electrolyte that make up each layer of a fuel cell--are mixed and put through two rollers that squeeze them. "You have three different doughs, you flatten each one, then layer them, then flatten them," he explains. "Then basically, you bake it."

The process paves the way for mass manufacture, according to Kelley Fletcher, the advanced-technology leader for sustainable-energy programs at GE Global Research, in Niskayuna, NY. "People have made fuel cells that make more power, and people have also made ones that have done this efficiency level," he says. "But to do so in one package, and at the cost estimate that we have done, is the real achievement here." Previous prototypes have cost thousands of dollars per kilowatt to manufacture, he says.

Of course, there are other roadblocks. Sulfur in the hydrocarbon fuel can contaminate the fuel cell and degrade it. GE and others are working on various pre-treatment processes to keep the contaminant out of the fuel cell. For example, researchers at Tufts University have developed a way to use cerium and lanthanum oxides to remove sulfur.

Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, a chemical engineer at Tufts who led development of the scrubber, cautions that while the GE work is impressive, large challenges lie ahead. "I think that the reported numbers represent a significant development," she says. "Of course, scale-up systems must be shown to be equally efficient in future work."

The work is part of a Department of Energy clean-coal initiative launched in 2003 that aims to build, within ten years, a highly efficient, multi-megawatt, solid-oxide fuel-cell power plant paired with coal-gasification technology. The United States is thought to have about 250 years' worth of coal in the ground. But burning coal looms as a major factor in increasing global warming; indeed, coal releases more carbon dioxide for each unit of energy produced than any other fossil fuel does.

In coal-gasification plants, the coal is heated and turned into a "syngas," a mixture of mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This can then be combusted in a type of power plant called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. The GE technology would allow hydrogen to be pulled out of the syngas and sent through a solid-oxide fuel cell.

Source : Technology Review

BP Solar & solar boom

It's boom time for solar power, as a rising tide of startups tout various approaches--from organic thin films to concentrating light with holograms--for harvesting energy from the sun. But amid the flurry of nascent technologies, BP Solar, a 30-year-old subsidiary of oil giant BP, is betting that old-fashioned silicon still holds the most potential for cost-effective solar power in the next decade.

In its latest move, the company has developed a solar module--a collection of solar cells--using a new silicon-manufacturing approach that the company says drives down the cost of generating solar power. The new technology boosts power production 8 percent without a price increase, the company says. BP Solar will begin production of these modules by mid 2007.

Technology Review caught up with Lee Edwards, president and CEO of BP Solar, to ask about the new technology and other efforts at the company.

Technology Review: You say your new silicon prototype--which you call Mono²--increases efficiency of your solar cells without increasing the cost. What is Mono²?

Lee Edwards: Over the next 10 years, BP Solar believes that a silicon-based cell technology will continue to drive cost efficiency. This announcement of the Mono² approach to creating the silicon wafer was driven by an acknowledgement of the two different types of silicon available: monocrystalline and multicrystalline. Monocrystalline silicon makes for high efficiency, but it's relatively expensive, and the solar-power industry competes with the microprocessor industry for this type of silicon. Multicrystalline is cheaper, but it is lower quality. Mono², broadly speaking, gives the same electrical-efficiency benefits as monocrystalline wafers but uses a multicrystalline casting approach that is less expensive.

TR: How does it work?

LE: In the traditional multicrystalline manufacturing, you basically put a bunch of rocks in a ceramic crucible, heat it to 1,500 degrees C, let it sit there for a day, and cool it slowly. You get a block of silicon, but the crystal structure is random. Some people say it's more visually appealing because of the way light reflects off it, but each one of those grain boundaries creates a barrier to electron flow. The beauty of our technique is that we've found, in our protected intellectual property, a way to essentially get a single crystal using another approach. The details are proprietary, but it's a combination of metallurgy and the process that allows us to do it.

TR: What's the efficiency or cost-per-watt benefit?

LE: When we say "efficiency," there are two components to it. There are some who love to advertise their cell-conversion efficiency, so you'll see 19 or 20 percent efficiency quoted. That is the amount of sunlight that hits the surface that is converted to electricity. When we talk about efficiency within BP Solar, it is the dollar-per-watt cost to convert sunlight into electricity. The Mono2 module can produce 8 percent more power for the same price as a module made from multicrystalline silicon modules on the market today. This decreases the price per watt.

TR: What other ways are you trying to squeeze extra watts from silicon?

LE: We've got two approaches within BP Solar to do that. One involves grooving the wafer itself with precision lasers that increase the surface area, allowing more sunlight to be converted to electricity. And the other is printing material on the front and the back to create electrical contacts that pull out the electricity without blocking too much sunlight in the process.

TR: But there's still the cost issue of installing solar modules. What approaches are you taking to reduce costs there?

LE: There are some innovations in the value chain that we're on the front edge of, including how you access your customer. In the U.S. we are selling products in more than 250 Home Depots, in California, New Jersey, and New York. Having in-store solar-sales capability basically simplifies the value chain so you don't have BP Solar selling to a group that sells to another group that goes out and markets the product. There's only the installer in between, and we endorse their capabilities.

Another aspect that we're looking at is how you actually construct a frame [for a solar module]. Rather than using extruded aluminum framing, we're looking at a cast polyurethane mold. It's stronger, it's lighter, it's easier to install, and it looks cool. And if you were really into the architecture, you could have different colors, different types of arrays. [Aesthetics] is a big barrier for going mainstream within solar because people don't want to feel like they've got a bunch of screen doors screwed into their roofs. And then the ultimate is if you make the solar as part of the roof, so you bring together building materials with the photovoltaic industry and say, Let's build a new roofing material that's pre-wired for new construction.

TR: Do you think that in the next couple of years we'll see more economically successful solar efforts?

LE: What's different now is that we've had a few years of high oil prices, we've had increased public pressure for policies that will allow for energy independence, and the environmental reality of making a difference in the carbon footprint of the planet is more accepted. So I think all those say there will be a big jump in continued demand. What we see is the demand forecast is significantly higher this year--and it just keeps getting bigger as more countries and more states enact policies to enable continued growth.

Source : Technologie Review

Google to convert its headquarters to solar power

Google Inc. is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America.

The Internet search leader announced what is believed to be the largest solar project undertaken by a U.S. company during a solar energy conference in Silicon Valley on Monday. Google believes the sun eventually can deliver as much as 30 percent of the power at its 1-million-square-foot campus in Mountain View -- a suburb about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of San Francisco.

The ambitious project will require installing more than 9,200 solar panels on a high-tech mecca nicknamed the ''Googleplex.'' After leasing the offices for several years, Google bought the campus for $319 million (euro255 million) earlier this year.

Once they are in place next spring, the solar panels are expected to produce about 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough power to supply about 1,000 homes.

The job is being handled by Pasadena-based EI Solutions, part of a high-tech incubator run by entrepreneur Bill Gross, whose idea to link ads to search engine requests during the 1990 inspired the business model that generates most of Google's profits.

Google wouldn't disclose the project's cost, but it won't strain a company with nearly $10 billion (euro8 billion) in cash.

The anticipated savings from future energy bills should enable Google to recoup the solar project's costs in five to 10 years, estimated David Radcliffe, the company's vice president of real estate.

''We hope corporate America is paying attention. We want to see a lot of copycats'' of this project, Radcliffe said.

Energy costs are a major concern at Google, which already consumes a tremendous amount of power to run the computer farms that keep its search engine humming.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin also are big supporters of alternative energy. The billionaires began driving hybrid cars shortly after they hit the mass market. Page also is among the investors in Tesla Motors Inc., a Silicon Valley startup developing a sports car that runs on electricity.

Despite technological advances since the first photovoltaic cells were invented 50 years ago, solar power is still two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels in the U.S. and relies on government subsidies to compete.

The solar energy industry nevertheless is expected to grow from $11 billion in 2005 to $51 billion in 2015, estimated Clean Edge Inc., a market research firm.

Südzucker AG, principal producteur européen de sucre annonce la cotation de sa filiale de production de bioéthanol, CropEnergies

Südzucker AG, le plus grand producteur européen de sucre, a annoncé un bénéfice record de 156,5 millions d'euros et un chiffre d'affaires de 2,92 milliards d'euros au premier semestre 2006/2007, soit une augmentation de 9,7% par rapport à l'année précédente.
Selon l'entreprise Südzucker, cette croissance est attribuée à l'exceptionnelle expansion de sa filiale CropEnergies, productrice de bioéthanol. CropEnergies, qui a fait son entrée en bourse en septembre 2006, affiche un bénéfice de 65 millions d'euros au premier semestre 2006, dépassant déjà son bénéfice total de l'année précédente (60 millions d'euros).