Now that Penguin is running ebook trials with two new library distributors — Baker & Taylor and 3M — the publisher has decided it is safe to make new ebooks available for lending again, the AP reported Wednesday. Penguin has been tracking ebook checkouts at libraries to make sure they are not cutting into paid book sales, and found that “the effect of library downloads on commercial revenues has been acceptable.”

“Penguin is proud to make all of our eBooks available to library patrons,” Tim McCall, Penguin’s VP of online sales and marketing, said in a statement. “After careful examination of our pilot programs, we are ready to take the next step and offer what consumers and libraries have been asking for, thus fulfilling our mission to bring new writers to readers.”

In its library trials, Penguin allows an ebook to be lent to only one person at a time, and after a year the library has to buy a new copy of the ebook. The prices for libraries are the same as retail prices. Penguin’s library ebooks aren’t available to Kindle users, because Baker & Taylor and 3M do not yet support the format.

Other publishers also place restrictions on ebook library lending. Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries, but at prices as much as three times higher than the retail price. HarperCollins allows its ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette only makes new ebooks available to some libraries in a pilot program, and charges more than retail price. Macmillan is running a two-year trial that makes 1,200 older ebooks available to libraries. Simon & Schuster does not make its ebooks available to libraries.

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Think big: 3M shows off 84” multitouch table

3M showed off the prototype of a 84” multitouch table, which ran an app developed for a science museum, allowing users to manipulate objects and reveal information about them. I was told that the app actually is used in the wild, albeit on a somewhat smaller table. The one shown at CES Unveiled allowed around 40 simultaneous touch points, but 3M wants to get that number up to 100 to comfortably allow up to 10 people to play with the table.

3M has been working on these touch interfaces for some time, and a spokesperson told me that there is significant interest from museums, retailers and even casinos. However, it’s rather unlikely that you’ll get to take one of these home anytime soon: I was told that the 4K LG display used for the 84” table alone costs around $12,000.

Think round: Sphero goes for a hands-on approach

Sphero, the Bluetooth-connected ball that you can remotely control with your cellphone or tablet, is getting a whole lot more interesting: The Colorado-based startup showed off a bunch of new games, including an augmented reality application that lets you throw cupcakes at game characters in your living room.

Sphero lets you use its Bluetooth-connected ball as a gaming remote control.

But what I found really intriguing was that a Sphero can also double as a gyro remote control. I was shown a game that allows users to run through the streets and fight zombies, all by turning and rolling the Sphero ball in your hand.

Now I know, that’s not technically a tactile interface, but it definitely felt like a very haptic experience to me. And granted, gyro isn’t exactly new, and there are plenty of games that allow you to do the same thing by simply tilting your iPad. But somehow, doing the same thing with the Sphero ball while the display surface stayed flat on whichever surface you had placed it on felt a lot more natural.

Interested in more CES Unveiled discoveries? Then check out my colleague Kevin Tofel’s mobile finds: 2-week fuel-cell; FitBug and Wi-Fi-to-USB media sharing.

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3M doesn’t currently support Amazon’s Kindle, the most popular e-reader in the country.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the pilot, in an effort to protect paid e-book sales, “will delay the release of e-books to the libraries for six months after the titles go on sale in stores and online.” Christopher Platt, NYPL director of collections and circulation, tells the WSJ “he hopes Penguin might eventually agree to make some titles available immediately, while retaining the six-month delay for hot-selling titles.”

Each e-book will expire after a year and the library will have to buy it again.

Other big-six publishers also have restrictions on e-book library lending, or do not make e-books available at all. Random House is the only big-six publisher that makes all of its e-books available to libraries, but it sharply increased its prices in March. HarperCollins allows an e-book to be borrowed 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette is offering new e-books to some libraries, also in a pilot program, but hasn’t confirmed which libraries or distributors it is working with. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan do not make e-books available to libraries at all.

Troubles with Kindle

When Penguin first removed its e-book titles from OverDrive in November 2011, it cited “concerns about the security of our digital editions” and also stopped lending e-books to libraries through Kindle. Specifically, Penguin might have been angry that when a library patron selects “Get for Kindle” on OverDrive, he or she is sent straight to Amazon’s website (rather than checking out the book from within the library site) and has to be logged into his or her Amazon account to get the book.

3M is in talks with Amazon to provide support for Kindle, but it doesn’t do so yet. The Kansas State Library, another library working with 3M, said recently that “Amazon had asked to postpone discussion with 3M until June (back in March) so we are hoping to receive more information soon.”

Related stories

Hachette is offering new e-books to some libraries

Random House sharply increases library e-book prices

Penguin ends e-book library lending and relationship with OverDrive

Why might a publisher pull its e-books from libraries?

Photo courtesy of Flickr / melanzane1013

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Hachette would not confirm which distributors or libraries it is working with — whether it is partnering with leading digital distributor OverDrive and/or with an OverDrive competitor like 3M Cloud Library or Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360.

“These pilot programs will help us learn more about library patrons’ interests, usage, and expectations,” Hachette said in a statement. “This information will help HBG devise the best strategy to reach the widest audience of e-book readers in libraries. We’ll have more to say once we have looked at the data from the pilots.”

3M’s Matt Tempelis did not verify that the company was working with Hachette but told me, “We are actively working with big-six publishers not fully engaged in library to find models that work for all parties. We have been making great progress towards those ends with several. I am not able to share any specifics at this time, but expect more details will be available very shortly.”

Random House is the only big-six publisher to offer unrestricted access to its titles, though it sharply increased the prices of e-books for libraries this spring. Penguin recently ended its relationship with OverDrive and will no longer distribute e-books and digital audiobooks to libraries — at least until it finds a new partner. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster do not make e-books available to libraries. HarperCollins allows e-books to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy.

via American Libraries magazine

Photo courtesy of Ian Barbour on Flickr

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3M has developed a new kind of battery anode made of silicon that can deliver a significant boost in energy density (amount of energy that can be stored in a given volume) for regular lithium ion batteries that are used in our gadgets. A battery is made up of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with an electrolyte in between. For a lithium ion battery, lithium ions travel from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte, creating a chemical reaction that allows electrons to be harvested along the way.

3M, which has been making battery materials since the 90′s, says its silicon anode is made up of a silicon alloy (silicon with lithium) that enables a 20 percent higher energy density when paired with a standard cathode. However, when the anode is paired with 3M’s own specialized cathode, the silicon anode can deliver a 40 percent improvement in energy density for a battery.

Graphite has traditionally been the anode material of choice for batteries, but it’s bulky and can’t hold as much energy as battery makers want. 3M’s silicon anode has a different material architecture which can hold more energy and bands with the lithium in the cycling process. A startup called Amprius, which is backed by Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, VantagePoint Venture Partners and Stanford University, is also working on a silicon nanostructured anode.

3M is targeting consumer electronics-focused battery makers, for its anode, and anode/cathode combo technology. Chris Milker, business development manager for 3M Electronic Markets Materials Division, said 3M is already working with original equipment manufacturers for batteries, but wouldn’t disclose the names of any partners.

Milker told me in an interview last month that 3M has been working on this innovation for close to ten years and said while “takes awhile for a revolutionary innovation to be implemented, but a lot of that investment will finally pay off.”

3M received a $4.6 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to develop the silicon anode tech for electric vehicles, and recently began to scale up manufacturing of its silicon anode tech at its factory in Cottage Grove, Minn.

To read more on battery opportunities check out my report in GigaOM Pro (subscription required) and my list of 25 battery breakthroughs for gadgets, electric cars and the grid.

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But there are still over a dozen tools out there trying to tackle this difficult market, from direct-to-consumer gadgets to more high-end services bundled with security, broadband, and solar systems. Will the startups, entrepreneurs, tech firms and investors behind these energy services succeed in a market that already has a good deal of collateral damage? Well, many more will struggle, but there could be a few breakout hits out there if they position themselves in the right way. Here are a dozen companies still vying for this market:

Home automation, security, broadband partners

Control4. Control4, founded in 2003 to provide home automation services, moved into the energy management space in summer 2009. In the energy space, the company sells wireless devices and services to utilities for home energy management, and counts customers like Nevada utility NV Energy. Utilities can use Control4′s tools to do residential demand response, which is basically asking customers to turn down their energy in various ways when the utility wants to more tightly manage the grid’s power use. Control4 has raised close to $75 million in funding from Frazier Technology Ventures’ Partner, vSpring Capitals, and Thomas Weisel Venture Partners.

iControl. iControl is the company behind Comcast’s new home security and energy management service, and has raised over $100 million from investors including Comcast Ventures (the VC arm of Comcast), Cisco, Intel’s VC arm Intel Capital, Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, and the parent company of security firm ADT. iControl says its latest round of $50 million will help the company expand its energy-based software and services, which enable home owners and utilities to be able to remotely manage lights, connected thermostats and smart appliances.

4Home. In December, telco gear giant Motorola  announced it was buying home automation and energy monitoring startup 4Home via its communications subsidiary Motorola Mobility. 4Home’s software enables home owners to access information — from digital media to energy info, home security and health data — across devices, and remotely. Verizon is using the 4Home service for its first trial of home automation and energy management.

Xanboo. AT&T bought home automation and energy player Xanboo in December. Xanboo   is a decade-old firm that was one of the original home automation players and enables home owners to monitor security, energy consumption, and digital media across devices.

EcoFactor. EcoFactor sells a service to utilities and broadband service providers (and other channel partners) that automates turning down a connected thermostat. The company shaves off energy use without the customer feeling the difference and provides a lower bill for the customer. EcoFactor says it has reached 17 percent energy savings in its trials.

Utility-focused energy services

Tendril. Tendril is the poster child for a company that has aggressively focused on reaching the home energy management market via utilities. The company sells software and devices that monitor and manage the home energy consumption of consumers, and recently scored a deal with (and an investment from) energy gear provider Siemens. Tendril has raised at least $73 million from investors including VantagePoint Venture Partners, Good Energies, and RRE Ventures.

OPower. OPower isn’t yet really in the home energy gadget or service space. Instead, it uses its software to help utilities send aggregated, detailed bills. But OPower is considering adding an energy gadget to its portfolio, the company told us. That move could put it squarely in competition with other utility-focused home energy management players like Tendril.

Silver Spring Network’s home energy tool. Smart grid network player Silver Spring Networks bought Greenbox a few years ago to be able to offer its utility customers home energy tools. So far, its energy savings in trials have been impressive.

Direct-to-consumer energy tools (some of these work with utilities, too)

PowerCost Monitor. Canadian Blue Line Innovations has started selling a $99 energy management device called the PowerCost Monitor at big box retailer Fry’s Electronics. That’s one of the lowest-cost home energy management devices we’ve seen yet that’s widely available. The PowerCost Monitor comes in two parts: a sensor and radio device which fits onto any electricity meter, and a display, which picks up the wireless signal of the home’s electricity data emitted by the sensor/radio. Blue Line Innovations was founded back in 2003, and already has over 100,000 PowerCost Monitors in the field today, mostly through utility installations. But the company told me that it has been shifting its primary focus to the consumer.

WattVision. Wattvision is a two-year-old Y-Combinator-born company that sells a bare-bones, low-cost energy management tool that it says is a snap to install on your meter and can be monitored via the web. It costs about $250 on its website, which is higher than I expected when I interviewed the company a couple of years ago. When Google shut its PowerMeter tool down, WattVision offered a $50-off coupon for the coupon code: “byepowermeter”.

TED, The Energy Detective. The TED device is made by Energy Inc, which was founded back in 2001, before energy management was a hot topic anywhere. Energy Inc. President and CEO Dolph Rodenberg told me in an interview that about 40 percent of its sales come from utilities — though declined to name its utility customers — while the majority of its sales come from the direct-to-consumer market. TED was also the first company to work with PowerMeter. Energy Inc also has backing by 3M.

AlertMe. AlertMe is a startup based in the U.K. that makes a home automation, security and energy management service. I’ve played with the company’s kit, and it has a nice design and is pretty easy to set up. AlertMe is backed by Index Ventures, Good Energies, VantagePoint Venture Partners, SET Venture Partners, and British Gas.

Images courtesy of Blue Line, Silver Spring Networks, GigaOM Events, and EcoFactor.

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The Minnesota company, founded in 2008, raised about $5.64 million a year ago and is looking to raise a Series B round to boost its sales and the production of its system, in which the solar panels incorporate power tracking-and-boosting features, said Meyer, who also is the company’s chief technology officer. Each system pairs a silicon panel with another panel lined with a reflective film from 3M to capture more light. The company also raised $1.5 million recently by selling convertible debt, reported the St. Paul Business Journal.

The startup is working closely with 3M, a Minnesota company with its own ambition to carve out a big share in the solar market. 3M upped its 2011 earnings forecast on Tuesday partly because it expects a stronger demand for its films for solar panels. The company, an expert manipulator of light, also has designed films to boost light concentration for solar thermal heat and power systems, as well as films for protecting solar cells from moisture.

“What’s intriguing about tenKsolar is the use of light optimization. If you look at the way the module industry has grown up, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in module design from the ground up,” said Dan Chen, business development manager at 3M’s renewable energy division.

Meyer, who was MiaSole’s vice president of engineering before starting tenKsolar, said the company set out to engineer cells that can overcome problems that others have sought to fix with power electronics attached to the back of a solar panel, such as microinverters made by Enphase Energy and power optimizers by Tigo Energy.

Both microinverters and power optimizers, which typically aren’t used in the same system, come with software that track and calculate the optimal power output of each solar panel and are able to adjust the power output of each panel to overcome what’s commonly called the “Christmas lights effect.” The effect refers to when solar panels are typically connected in series, a design that means the poorest performing panel drags down the power output of other solar panels.

Solar cells, too, are typically connected in series and suffer the same shortcoming, which could happen when the sunlight is blocked by a tree, cloud or building or there is dust on the panel. TenKsolar connects the cells differently and builds “more than 10” power optimizers into each panel to control different groups of cells, Meyer said. Now that the cells’ performance isn’t affected by the poorest performing ones among them, they can make use of both the direct light and the reflected light from the 3M film on an opposite-facing panel.

“By using reflective light, we can add a fraction of the cost of solar panel itself but have that much higher efficiency. That led us down the path on how to integrate the light,” Meyer said. The reflector also concentrates the light so that tenKsolar can use less silicon in each panel.

In an array of tenKsolar systems, the solar panels also are connected in parallel instead of series. The company is selling equipment for the entire array, including the railing for anchoring the solar and reflective panels and the inverter that is necessary to convert electricity from direct current to alternating current to be used on site or feed the grid. It’s going after the same flat, commercial rooftops that companies such as Solyndra are engineering their products for. Solyndra, too, has engineered a dramatically different system, which aims to make use of naturally reflected light from a rooftop that is painted white.

TenKsolar uses silicon solar cells, particularly the premium version that can yield a panel efficiency of 16-17 percent, Meyer said. With the reflector film, the panel efficiency could go up as much as 25 percent, Meyer said. By adding that reflector, tenKsolar uses fewer solar cells than conventional solar panels to cut cost, he added.

The company’s technology sounds great, but what does it cost to customers? Here is where Meyer, like so many other solar startup executives, is mum. He claims a tenKsolar array can compete with one using conventional silicon solar panels. It is more expensive than a ground-mounted array using solar thin film technologies, such as First Solar’s cadmium-telluride solar panels, because it doesn’t have enough production capacity to price its systems competitively yet, Meyer said.

The startup makes its own solar panels and integrates them into laminated sheets at a 20 MW factory in Shanghai. The half-finished panels then go to a 20 MW factory in Minnesota to undergo framing and other final assembly steps, Meyer said.

At 20 MW, the company’s manufacturing operation is small. It’s shipped “several megawatts” to customers primarily in Minnesota, Meyer said, so the company still has a lot of work to convince the market that its technology is good and it can boost production to meet demand.

Photo courtesy of tenKSolar

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The new initiative, called SunShot, is the latest effort by the U.S. Department of Energy to make solar electricity cheaper to produce (using solar panels). The goal is to cut the installation cost of a large-scale solar power project, from equipment to labor and a built-in profit margin for developers, to $1 per watt without government subsidies by 2020.

Reducing the cost of solar isn’t necessarily a new goal for the DOE. Already the White House has suggested that the stimulus money has helped to drive down the price of solar electricity by half over the next five years. The administration has invested billions of dollars into the solar industry over the past two years alone, from the $935 million in loan guarantees to Solyndra and Abound Solar for building factories to the roughly $472 million in grants to developers for installing solar power generation projects.

The goal is not just to boost the country’s renewable energy generation but also to create jobs. The investments are also meant to help counter complaints that the U.S. is falling behind countries such as China in providing government support for green technologies.

“We want (solar) to be competitive without subsidies. If it’s achievable, then, boy, the companies and the installers will have a huge world market,” Chu said during a press conference. SunPower’s co-founder and president emeritus Dick Swanson joined Chu during the conference call to present the company as an example of a successful beneficiary of DOE funding.

At installation cost of $1 per watt, the cost to produce solar power will fall to roughly $0.06 per watt, making it comparable to the wholesale rates of power produced by coal or natural gas, Chu said. Currently, solar power plants built for utilities have cost from $3.50 per watt to more than $7 per watt, depending on the size and whether the solar panels are installed on the ground or the roofs of commercial buildings, according to GTM Research.

That term “large scale” doesn’t have a defined size. Back in 2009, the largest solar power plant was a 25MW project by Florida Power & Light. The DeSoto power plant includes 180 acres of SunPower solar panels. In 2010, Sempra Generation completed a 48MW project on 380 acres in Nevada.

Projects under development now by other companies are in the hundreds of megawatts range each, and they are set to rise from remote tracks of land. At the same time, some states and utilities are promoting installations of smaller projects, from 1-2MW to about 20MW, that can be built closer to communities they serve.

Chu is launching SunShot as part of a larger plan by the administration to boost the production of cleaner sources of energy. In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said he would like the country to get 80 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2035. He said “clean sources” would include not just renewable sources such as solar and wind but also nuclear, natural gas and “clean coal.” Clean coal is a euphemism for a type of technology that scrubs carbon dioxide emissions in coal-fired power plants in order to reduce the amount of emissions that they emit into the atmosphere.

As part of SunShot, the DOE plans to invest up to $20.3 million in five manufacturers of different components of a solar electric system. The recipients include 3M (a polymer sheet to replace glass as the protective to layer of a panel); 1366 Technologies (a new process to produce silicon wafers for making solar cells); and Veeco (a factory equipment to make copper-indium-gallium-selenide cells).  SunShot also will fund efforts to reduce installation and permitting costs in the future, the DOE said.

1366, incidentally, also has received funding from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) program, which aims to fund innovative technology that might be considered too risky to attract private investments.

The remaining $7 million will go to companies that are in the earlier stage of their product development. The recipients are Caelux, Solexant, Stion and Crystal Solar. The $7 million funding is coming from the Photovoltaic Solar Incubator Program, which isn’t new and whose mission is also to fund early-stage companies and help them reach pilot or even commercial production.

We have written about Stion and Solexant before, both of which have lined up funding and space for commercial production. The new DOE funding is meant to develop their next-generation products, it appears. Stion’s CEO, Chet Farris, told us about the company’s effort to add an additional layer of semiconductor material to boost the efficiency of its copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) thin films.

While it’s difficult to say whether these investments will deliver the promised results, the administration can count on increasing scrutiny from skeptics questioning the funding decisions and the benefits for taxpayers. To show success, the DOE will have to point to more than SunPower as a role model.

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Photo of DeSoto plant, courtesy of SunPower

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