The ability to predict energy use and do something about it will become more important as businesses look for ways to reduce costs and use energy more efficiently. A startup called GridNavigator has launched a cloud-based service that performs energy consumption forecasts throughout the day. Read More »
Cleantech
A new report out of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Labs says that the $9 billion clean power cash grant program (formally called the 1603 grant program), which expired at the end of 2011, was actually working and creating jobs and economic output. Read More »
A year after the Vehicle Production Group (VPG) closed a $50 million Department of Energy loan for designing a natural gas vehicle, the company used the money as planned, began production and is seeing hundreds of vehicles on the road so far. Read More »
Hyperion Power Generation plans to build one of its first modular nuclear devices at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River test site in South Carolina. Are modular nuclear reactors on their way? Read More »
Solar startup Alta Devices, backed by investors such as Kleiner and Dow Chemical, gives us a tour of its new pad in Silicon Valley where it’s setting up a pilot production line to make gallium-arsenide solar cells. Read More »
The big question for SolarCity when it didn’t secure a federal loan guarantee for an ambitious project a few months back was this: could it carry on with the plan? The answer is yes. SolarCity will get a $350 million loan from Bank of America . Read More »
Beacon Power, the flywheel maker that filed for bankruptcy last month after winning a $43 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, announced on Saturday that it plans to sell its 20 MW flywheel plant in Stephentown, New York, to pay back the DOE loan. … Read More »
I look at the numbers for whether the DOE and Obama will be able to meet the goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Read More »
Electric vehicle startup Fisker Automotive has dramatically scaled back production plans of its first car, the Karma, in the fourth quarter of 2011, and it won’t ramp up to full production until the second quarter of 2012. Read More »
Flywheel maker Beacon Power declared bankruptcy on Sunday after winning a $43 million loan guarantee from the DOE in the summer of 2009. This is the second company to declare bankruptcy that had a loan guarantee from the DOE program, following solar maker Solyndra’s bankruptcy. Read More »
Fighting for funding is a perennial, bloody sport for just about every federal agency. But the budget funding cycle is seriously out of whack with the development cycle for clean energy, according to Arun Majumdar, director of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E). Read More »
As the failure of now-defunct solar panel maker Solyndra continues to make headlines, the Department of Energy’s Loan Chief Jonathan Silver plans to step down. Silver will become a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the think tank Third Way. Read More »
More Must Reads
