Tallhamn said in the blog post that the company failed to draw a lead investor “willing to commit enough capital to fill out the round with follow on investors.” His insights are an indicator of the struggles for the entire energy management sector, including potential competitors that Tallhamn used in a slide from the Cleantech Open including Ecofactor, EnergyHub, AlertMe, and Control4.

The investment community’s perspective on this space had become significantly more critical since we got started, and probably for good reasons. A lot of capital has been destroyed in Series A-Z rounds of funding by our competitors, and most investors made it clear that they’d want to see massive traction before committing capital. They were taking a “wait and see” approach.

The business of helping consumers reduce and manage energy consumption in homes and across appliances and devices is such a small market right now, there can’t be too many players going after basically non-existent revenue. OPower, which provides data analytics and software for utilities for energy bills, is one of the few companies in energy management that I know of that is doing well.

Many of the revenues right now depend on scoring utility deals, which can take months and years to implement. Though, there has also been recent attention from the telcos and consumer electronics companies in the energy management space. But as we’ve mentioned pure play energy management gadgets probably won’t be that interesting to consumers — the gadgets will have to do something else, too, like manage your media or run a home security system. Tallhamn said in his blog post: “On a micro level, the average household’s energy costs are so small ($4k on average across electricity and fuel) that any direct to consumer product aiming to reduce them needs to deliver something beyond just savings.”

Hug was taking a free approach, and looking to mine energy information, with Scoble calling Hug the “Mint of your energy bill.” The company had launched a downloadable energy management application for computers that compiled how many minutes your computer slept and basically called your attention to how much energy you were saving. That app was only a “trojan horse” into a plan to grab a greater piece of the energy management sector, and the company’s idea was to start building a user base before the smart energy devices hit the market, “so that we’d be in a great position for becoming the leading supplier of analytics and control software once they had arrived,” writes Tallhamn.

But alas, you can’t build a product without funding. Tallhamn writes:

Knowing when to push through and when to call it quits is probably one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur, and while I’ll never know for sure, I feel quite confident that this was the right decision for everyone involved.

For more research related to smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

As I lay out in my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), 2011 could give some long-running green IT assertions a chance to prove themselves. Sheer power capacity restraints — not enough substations per data center — are forcing data centers to constrain energy consumption. That could make 2011 the year for lower-power challengers to Intel’s x86 architecture’s server dominance.

Atom-based servers from SeaMicro and the ARM-based systems from Marvell and startup Smoothstone offer low power use in exchange for slower performance, and Nvidia’s upcoming ARM-based server CPU for integration with its GPUs, could provide a new low-power, high-performance alternative. How quickly these offerings find their way into servers and data centers may help indicate what value the market places on energy efficiency.

Then there’s cloud computing, which could be more energy-efficient as a byproduct of its overall promise to better-manage IT assets. Microsoft says switching to the cloud can shave 30 to 90 percent of the carbon footprint from large to small enterprise computing environments. But when the power used to transport data to and from the cloud becomes large enough, cloud computing can be a net energy loser. I’d be interested in seeing the math behind cloud computing efficiency across more use cases — data-intensive video streaming or storage retrieval, versus simple web hosting and office support type situations. That would give the industry more visibility into just how green their cloud computing plans really are.

Finally, while green data centers are all the rage, office computing environments aren’t investing as much to energy-manage their networked IT environments — even when the technology can pay itself off in less than a year’s time, as startup Verdiem claims, or cut power bills by 20 percent, as Fujitsu promises. More advanced technology, such as from French startup AVOB’s promise to ramp down processor speed and voltage, promises even deeper savings and faster payback. Will corporate IT pick up on the offer?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• How to Make Cloud Computing Greener
• Pushing Processors Past Moore’s Law
• Thing Converged Infrastructure Means Lock In? Think Again.

Image courtesy of Ramsesoriginal via Creative Commons license.

As Swoboda explained it to me, Intematix has developed an LED product that layers phosphor onto a material that separates it from the blue LED energy source, so LEDs made with ChromaLit have their blue light and white light separated. In most traditional LEDs, blue chips are actually coated with the phosphor compound. The result of ChromaLit, according to Intematix, is that LED makers can have more flexibility with lighting quality, and color, and can make LEDs that are both more efficient and have a lower cost.

“Rarely do LED makers talk about improvements in the phosphor performance,” says Swoboda. They’ve only focused on the chip performance, which is why he thinks the product will be so interesting to the LED manufacturers.

Well, that’s the pitch anyway. Eleven-year-old Intematix will be selling ChromaLit to LED makers, but didn’t announce any major customers at launch time. The proof in how revolutionary the product is will lie in how many LED maker customers Intematix signs up.

Intematix was formed over a decade ago to work on something called “combinatorial synthesis, which is a process of doing accelerated materials discovery and development,” explained Swoboda to me. But, yeah, as you can expect, that’s a rather broad process, and revenues are in successful niche applications. It wasn’t until 2005 that Intematix focused on phosphors and solid-state lighting.

Over the decade, the company has raised several rounds of VC financing, though Swoboda declined to name how much, from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Crosslink Capital. Swoboda tells me that Intematix is also looking to raise a “pre-IPO” or mezzanine round in the first quarter of 2011, which could help the company’s potential IPO at a later date.

For more research on LED lighting check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Opportunities in LED Solid-State Lighting
• Top 10 Greentech Companies of 2010
• 7 Things That Spell Growing Pains for Greentech in 2011

The wind industry had close to $4.8 billion in transaction value in 2010, which included private fund-raising deals, initial public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. Solar generated a transaction value of $3.2 billion, and energy efficiency, which includes smart grid and LED lighting companies, followed with $2.5 billion.

The transaction values run parallel to the cleantech investing numbers for 2010, which found that solar startups continued to draw the most money in venture capital investment last year, while energy-efficiency startups garnered the largest number of deals, according to the Cleantech Group. However, given utility-scale wind is a more matured market, there are fewer investments in next wind technology startups.

A bulk of the transaction value that went to wind was for building energy generation projects, the report noted. An analysis by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) showed that wind energy companies had grabbed the most money from a Treasury Department program that was set up in 2009 to subsidize renewable energy generation construction. As of November of last year, money that went to wind companies accounted for 85 percent of what the government had given out (solar took 8 percent).

In terms of the number of deals, the energy efficiency sector took the top spot, garnering 104 deals (fundraising rounds and M&A) last year, the Peachtree report said. Solar ranked second with 99 deals, followed by wind with 35 deals.

The report surmised that the strong interest in energy efficiency companies and projects will continue partly because they require less money and give quicker returns than more capital-intensive businesses such as solar and biofuel. Apparently, psychology also played a role, the report said, noting that many so-called energy-efficiency technologies are formerly called information technology and many investors came from the IT world.

Overall, $14.7 billion flowed into 371 fund-raising deals and mergers and acquisitions across all greentech sectors in 2010, and that reflected a 55-percent jump from 2009. Fund-raising deals, including equity investments in companies or projects, totaled $10.1 billion, a 65-percent hike from 2009. Mergers and acquisitions accounted for $4.6 billion in 2010, a 37 percent increase from the previous year.

So who are the losers? Bioenergy firms such as makers of biofuels to power cars. About $1.4 billion flowed into that sector, a 27-percent decline from 2009. Investors showed a strong interest in biofuel a few years back, when gasoline prices jumped dramatically and lawmakers began to approve policies and funds to jumpstart this new industry.

It has become painfully clear since then that figuring out how to make fuels from plants is trickier and takes more time and money than many had anticipated. Many companies have pushed back the time they will start mass-producing biofuels, prompting the government to dramatically scale back its expectation of gradually replacing fossil fuel with more renewable sources.

The energy storage sector, meanwhile, saw a 40-percent drop in deal values. But the report said the number is skewed by A123 Systems’ $378 million IPO in 2009, therefore, the storage business actually had a good year in 2010. Other fields that received less money included ocean and tidal power, carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

Related Content From GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Top 10 Greentech Companies of 2010
• 7 Things That Spell Growing Pains for Greentech in 2011
• Green IT 2011: China Marches Towards Greentech Dominance

Photo courtesy of Christopher Chappelear

By buying the Plano, Texas-based Lineage from its current owner, the private equity firm The Gores Group, GE will get a hold of data center power equipment customers including Verizon and HP, as well as a revenue stream that stood at $450 million in fiscal year 2010. It will also gain an in-house provider of inside-the-building gear for its growing data center business and related power grid businesses, which stretch from power generation to energy distribution grids.

GE has been making investments lately in data center-focused technologies; power conversion devices being just one area. GE has invested multiple rounds into wireless energy sensor startup SynapSense, and has been offering engineering and management services for more energy-efficient data center construction and retrofit projects for years now.

Lineage’s roots in AC-to-DC power conversion could give it a boost in a growing trend amongst data center designers: going to all-DC power systems. JPMorgan, Sprint, Boeing, Bank of America and SAP have built all-DC data centers, and GE has partnered with DC data center equipment maker Validus DC Systems.

In the meantime, rivals in the power grid space such as Schneider Electric and ABB have been making their own moves into the data center realm. Data centers used about 1.5 percent of the power generated in the U.S. in 2006, but that share was expected to double by 2012 to add up to $7.4 billion in annual power bills, according to a 2007 EPA report.

That could drive a fourfold increase in the green data center market to some $41.4 billion by 2015, Pike Research estimates. Growth has been driven both by telecom-focused growth in smartphones and other mobile devices, as well as through innovations in the traditional IT sector such as cloud computing.

Gores Group bought Lineage from conglomerate Tyco for $100 million three years ago, and Tyco acquired it from Lucent as part of a $2.5 billion deal in 2000. GE’s acqusition should close in the first quarter of 2011, GE told Bloomberg.

For more research on green data centers check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power
• Green Data Center Design Strategies
• Will Software or Sensors Will in Data Center Efficiency

Image courtesy of The Planet via Creative Commons license.

Yeah, it’s not exactly what I expected from the almost two-decade-old firm which has, until now, built a business around its 8,000 weather tracking stations. But Earth Networks has already partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has launched the first green house gas observation station in the network at Scripps.

There are a handful of these types of green house gas emissions observation stations in the world today, and the first was deployed by Scripps at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii in 1958. (Check out this excellent article in the New York Times last month on the Mauna Loa tracking station). But Earth Networks says these observation stations aren’t networked together and don’t provide a global picture of emissions in enough detail and in real time.

The Earth Network will track both carbon and methane emissions and many of the observation stations will be built on tall towers and high up locations. The data that comes out of the sensor network will be used to provide detailed reports and will also be integrated into the WeatherBug app, so companies, governments, municipalities and consumers can check out the data. You can also observe some of it live online.

Earth Networks is initially working with Picarro, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup that sells $50,000 greenhouse gas-detecting sensor boxes. The analyzers are about the size of a desktop PC, and they work by firing laser beams into the air to determine concentrations of green house gases, and then measure the changes in wavelength signals. While the technology has existed in labs for decades, Picarro has stuffed all this measuring capability into a portable, 58-pound box of sensors that requires little maintenance.

The global sensor network will be an important tool for fighting climate change, but how commercially successful the operation will be, I’m not sure. No doubt if the U.S. ever passes carbon legislation, and if the U.N.’s green house gas negotiations make progress in the next few years, more governments and companies will want to pay Earth Networks to access its green house gas data.

Earth Networks did manage to build up weather-based services around its weather tracking stations, and the same type of products and applications will be needed for green house gas emissions data. In recent years, as AWS, Earth Networks started to sell its weather data to smart grid companies and utilities. The barrier to entry for Earth Network’s competitors is the $25 million worth of observation stations, but the intelligence of the network will come from the algorithms that sort through the emissions data.

To learn more about tools and companies that are hard at work crunching this type of so-called “big data,” come check out our Big Data conference in New York on March 23. I’ll be there.

Related GigaOM Pro content:

• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• Report: IT and Networking Issues for the Electric Vehicle Market
• Home Energy Management: Consumer Attitudes and Preferences

Most of these solar battery cases are really meant for topping off the iPhone battery, and shouldn’t be relied on as a primary power source. Even if you leave most of these devices in the sun for hours, they’ll only give you a small bit of talk time. But still, extending your battery with clean power, is kind of cool and also a convenient conversation starter when you’re trying to pick up that hippy chick (dude) at Whole Foods.

1. Frostfire’s Mooncharge. Design firm Frostfire has created an iPhone 4 case called the “Mooncharge” that has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery at the base with a small solar panel embedded on it that can extend the battery life of the iPhone. Twenty minutes of direct sunlight shining on the case will buy you an extra 50 minutes on standby mode, or 5 minutes of chatting. Cost: $60.

2. Volt Solar Charger. Chinese developer Xiamen Solar Electronics (XSE), has created the Volt Solar Charger which, like the Mooncharge, also connects an extra battery to the iPhone, along with solar panels, to extend the battery life. GoSolarUSA will be selling the Volt Solar Charger in the U.S. Cost: Not available.

3. Novothink’s Surge. Another battery/case/panel combo. The Surge uses a 1320 mAh battery, and two hours of direct sunlight can deliver 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network (60 minutes of talk time on a 2G network). Cost: $80.

4. Icetech’s Solar Wallet. A modified version of these cases is iceTECH’s i3000 solar charger series. It uses a wallet design, with the solar panel on the outside, and the 1350 mAh lithium-ion battery inside. The wallet can charge the phone fully in direct sunlight in about three hours. Cost: $50.

5. Solio’s Solar Charger. The Solio brand is one of the most well-known when it comes to tapping sunlight for cell phones. The Solio classic charger has three panels that open up like a fan, and deliver power to a 1650 mAh battery. When the battery is fully charged, which takes nine hours, it gives you 10 hours of talk time. Solio also has two other models with different designs. Cost: $100 (classic).

6. Soulra Solar Dock. Made for the outdoor music enthusiast, the Soulra Solar Dock is an outdoor music docking station, powered by solar, for your iPhone. The solar panels power the dock and the device. Pool party! Eton makes the device. Cost: $175.

7. Bonus Round, Some Day Apple? Speculation about Apple adding some kind of solar power feature to its iDevices has popped up periodically over the past several years. In 2008, Apple reportedly filed a patent application that indicated the company was looking at ways to embed solar panels behind the LCD screens of mobile gadgets like iPods, iPhones and laptops.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• How Mobile Networks Can Cut Carbon
• Why Google Android’s Electric Vehicle Deal with GM Matters
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Fuel makes up a massive percentage of airlines’ operating costs, and burning it in the air accounts for the vast majority of the airline industry’s estimated 2 percent of global carbon emissions. But making slight adjustments to the way airplanes come into landings at airports can shave between 5 to 15 percent off of the fuel burned in a typical flight. Spread across the airline industry, that adds up to a lot of saved fuel.

Old-school air traffic control systems require planes to track widely separated flight patterns, and descend to a certain altitude and then stay there, in a step-wise fashion. But Southwest’s new Required Navigation Performance (RNP) flight procedures allows planes to track tighter flight paths and glide continuously downward toward landing can save a surprising amount of fuel, it turns out (check out this animation for more detail).

Naverus, a startup that developed technology behind RNP flight procedures, was acquired by General Electric in November 2009, and GE Aviation has been testing the new technology in the U.S. since August. GE is one of the partners in Southwest’s new RNP flights at 11 U.S. airports, along with Boeing — which has outfitted 345 of its 737-700s with the technology to fly RNP patterns — and Honeywell.

The Federal Aviation Administration wants to roll RNP out to all the country’s airports and airlines over the coming years as part of its Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) program. That could cost around $6 billion to $7 billion in upgrades for the federal government and airlines and airports to support the new flight procedures — but it’s a needed next step for the nation’s air traffic control system to manage ever-increasing volumes of passenger and cargo flights, as well as save fuel and money.

Naverus has also tested its technology in Australia, Canada, Peru and China as well, and GE Aviation is testing it in the European AIRE (Atlantic-Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions) project.

For more research on green transportation check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Car Data As the Next Platform for Innovation
  
• Report: IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management
• Why Microsoft’s Electric Vehicle Deal With Ford Matters

Image courtesy of TXphotoblog via Creative Commons license.

The move is important because Verizon’s smart home pilot — and commercial product that will come out later in 2011 — is one of the first moves from a major U.S. telco to offer energy management services, and could kick off the nascent energy management industry. To date, despite a lot of attempts by startups in the market, the home energy management space hasn’t yet taken off.

Z-Wave is a proprietary wireless technology that uses chips basically made by one vendor: Sigma Designs, which acquired Z-Wave chipmaker Zensys in 2008. The Z-Wave Alliance does have prominent members, including ADT, Black & Decker, Danfoss, Leviton and Ingersoll Rand, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have proprietary roots. In contrast the wireless standard ZigBee has tens of millions of chips and modules being made by multiple vendors for dozens of device partners.

But to date ZigBee has been a technology embraced by the power industry and utilities, instead of consumer electronics makers. Z-Wave has the lead in overall home automation products on the market, with about 250, compared to ZigBee’s 100 certified devices (these numbers are from December).

The smart home product from Verizon will include a connected thermostat, smart plugs, appliance modules, windows and door sensors, and a service gateway, all enabled by Z-Wave. The connected camera, which can be used for security applications, will use WiFi. Using this connected gear, consumers will be able to monitor and manage both their home energy consumption, and security services.

Verizon is working with 4Home, the home automation company that was recently acquired by Motorola, for its smart home trail. 4Home has long been a member of the Z-Wave alliance.

Verizon’s principle architect for its Home Monitoring and Control services, John Valdez, and Jack Eastman, Verizon product manager, told me in an interview last week that Verizon is initially focused on Z-Wave for its smart energy home service because the wireless technology is “more readily available,” than working with the utility-embraced home wireless standard ZigBee.

There are more consumer-focused and commercially available products based around Z-Wave, said the Verizon execs. But that doesn’t mean that Verizon won’t be including other wireless technologies including ZigBee in the future: “We are more than happy to integrate anything into it.”

The progress of Z-Wave in the smart energy home, is apparent in other deals, too, which we pointed out in this article for GigaOM Pro, subscription required. For example, Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo said in October it planned a Z-Wave-based home energy management offering, featuring “smart tap” power sensing devices and home routers from Sumitomo.

Smart meter makers — which have turned to ZigBee in droves — also aren’t exactly rushing to open systems to connect with home device makers, points out the Verizon execs. In fact in Verizon’s energy product it includes something it calls a “smart meter,” but not one of the ZigBee-based standard ones. Instead the Verizon energy product includes a circuit clamp, which records energy usage and connects to an interface via Z-Wave.

The Verizon execs said that they will be working closely with Sigma and the Z-Wave Alliance to push for a more open approach.

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of Ytechblogs via Creative Commons license.

Over at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), I’ve compiled a list of companies that are both leaders and up-and-comers in the solar power, smart grid, biofuel, green vehicle and energy efficiency sectors, as well as one utility and one international energy conglomerate. These companies help illustrate the role that the old-school energy industries are going to play in the greentech evolution.

While broader economic issues will play the critical role in determining the course that greentech industries take across sectors and countries next year, several companies should serve as a pretty good gauge for their industries as a whole. For solar we have our low price leader, First Solar, and potential solar thermal IPO candidate BrightSource Energy. In the smart grid sector, there’s another rumored IPO hopeful, Silver Spring Networks, and would-be rival Grid Net. And in the home energy management sphere chameleon-like company People Power helps us keep up with the twists and turns of that overcrowded market.

Electric vehicle charging, meanwhile, brings up Better Place, and also leads us to NRG Energy, a power generation giant taking innovative steps into for-profit car charging as well as solar and wind power production and marketing. And with venture financing playing an increasingly important role in the greentech industry, General Electric is worth keeping an eye on in the next year.

To read more about what these companies hold in store for the coming months, read my full post.

We’re curious to hear which companies you think don’t belong on the list, and which ones you feel should be added — and happy new year.

Image courtesy of flickr user Kim Scarborough.

Related Content From GigaOM Pro (subscription required)

• Top 10 Greentech Companies of 2010
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