Alphabet Energy, founded in 2009 as a spin-out from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, makes a next-generation thermoelectric material, which is a semiconductor that can convert heat to electricity. When thermoelectric materials come in contact with heat it causes the electrons to move from the hot side of the material to the cold side, and the difference in temperature causes the material to produce electricity.

While most thermoelectric materials out there come from expensive, rare and exotic substances (like bismuth telluride), Alphabet Energy uses basic and abundant silicon, found in chips and solar cells. That means Alphabet’s products could be much less expensive than the current ones on the market. In addition all of Alphabet Energy’s material manufacturing can be done on existing chip production machines, so it could have much lower manufacturing costs as well.

Alphabet Energy has been working on using its material in generators that can turn waste heat into electricity, and which can tap into heat from industrial sources like exhaust pipes, or power plant flues. The startup already has one of its devices installed in an industrial facility in California that converts exhaust-gas waste heat into electricity.

Encana is interested in using these types of waste heat recovery generators for when it pulls natural gas out of the ground. Natural gas drilling and refining uses a lot of heat and that heat could be recycled into electricity.

Down the road, the holy grail of thermoelectrics is the automotive industry. Alphabet Energy could use its material in auto parts and engines that capture waste heat.

It’s a hard year to raise money for a cleantech startup. Many venture capitalists are moving away from investing in new cleantech companies, and government funds for energy innovation is tight, too. Alphabet Energy’s Series B round included existing investors Claremont Creek Ventures (Oakland-based VC firm), TPG’s venture arm TPG Biotech, CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund. Alphabet raised a $12 million series A round led by TPG in 2011, and a seed round from Claremont and CalCEF in 2010.

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Five-year-old ecoATM’s kiosks use technology to identify the recycled item (like your basically new iPhone), quantify its condition and worth, and offer you compensation in cash or coupons. The company has about 300 kiosks across 20 states as of now, spokeswoman Anita Giani tells me, which is up from the 50 kiosks they had installed about a year ago.

That’s steady growth, though a bit slower ramp up than they had expected a few years ago. But Giani says that ecoATM is looking to install hundreds of kiosks more this year, and has also expanded the types of devices it can accept to recently to include tablets.

ecoATM’s kiosks also have wireless connections, and the boxes use software from startup Axeda to run diagnostics and do remote management. The company can do remote software refreshes on its kiosks, and it can also fix any problems with the kiosks without having to send a technician in person out to each kiosk.

This debt round is separate from the company’s previous equity rounds. Before that Series B, ecoATM had also raised $14.4 million Series A round in early 2011. The company has a set of strategic backers that could be a strong asset to get its kiosks into more stores, including change kiosk giant Coinstar, Oakland venture firm Claremont Creek Ventures, Tao Ventures, and Singapore billionaire Koh Boon Hwee.

I’ve been watching the company’s site for a few years, and it’s now added a lot more information about the technology and methods they are using to combat theft. The problem with the kiosks is that if someone steals a new iPhone, and takes it to the kiosk, it could provide an easy way to get cash for the stolen device. After a friend’s phone was stolen recently in San Francisco, the police actually told her to go down to check an area that had recycling options, as it wasn’t uncommon for phones to end up there.

ecoATM says to fight theft, they have established methods like: requiring a drivers license to recycle goods, the recycler has to be 18 or over, the recycler gives a thumbprint, the devices are kept for 14 days as a precaution, the kiosks use remote cameras to take photos of and monitor the recycler, and serial numbers are kept of the devices to check against reported stolen goods.

This story was updated at 9:308AM to confirm that ecoATM’s debt round was separate from its former equity rounds.

This story was updated at 2:56PM to add that the $40 million in debt funding came from private equity firm Falcon Investment Advisors.

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EcoFactor has developed smart algorithms that can control connected thermostats to reduce a building’s overall energy consumption. The system learns the customer’s behavior and can shave off energy consumption without the occupant really knowing. The service can also enable utilities to practice what the power industry calls demand response, where during peak energy usage hours of the day (like a hot summer day) a utility can turn down the energy use of amenable customers.

NV Energy is offering the efficiency service to its customers under the mPowered brand, and those customers can see reduced energy bills. EcoFactor is supposed to enable NV Energy to cut a minimum of 20 MW in Las Vegas market during the first phase of the mass deployment.

The mass deployment is a major milestone for the development of more automated, more consumer-focused demand response services. For a long time demand response has been manual, where large building owners or factory owners agree to manually turn down their energy use during peak times in exchange for compensation. The utility would alert them to the demand response time by phone call or email. But with automated systems and residential-focused services, demand response can be much more efficient and convenient.

EcoFactor was founded in 2006 and launched in late 2009. Its software plugs in a lot of data about things like weather and demographics, and combines that data with information about the home owners’ behavior. Think of EcoFactor’s software like Nest’s learning thermostat, but without the Nest hardware. EcoFactor is also working with Reliant Energy and Comcast and is backed by Aster Capital, Claremont Creek Ventures and RockPort Capital Partner.

EcoFactor is an example of the rise of startups using big data and machine learning to reduce energy usage.

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EcoFactor, founded in 2006 and launched in late 2009, has developed software that plugs in a lot of data about things like weather and demographics, and combines that data with information about the home owners’ behavior. EcoFactor uses these big data sets to tweak a home’s connected thermostat settings ever so slightly to shave off energy consumption, but also to maintain a comfortable temperature in the home.

Think of EcoFactor’s software a bit like Nest’s learning thermostat, but without the slick hardware. Customers can manually override the EcoFactor settings at any time.

Utilities are partnering with EcoFactor to run demand response programs, which is when utilities collectively reduce customers’ heating and cooling consumption at times of peak demand. Say it’s 4pm and the height of Summer and utilities can use EcoFactor’s software to cool customer’s homes (that have agreed to be in the program) at a slower rate. EcoFactor has sold its services to Reliant Energy. Other companies that sell similar energy analytics products, like Nest, and EnergyHub, are also working with Reliant and other utilities.

Broadband service providers, like cable companies, are also interested in these types of energy management services, and EcoFactor has partnered with Comcast and its Xfinity Home service. Selling energy management is a way that broadband service providers can use their networks to sell more services and attract new customers.

EcoFactor’s new funding comes from Aster Capital, and includes additional funding from existing investors Claremont Creek Ventures and RockPort Capital Partners.

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I covered Isentropic back in 2009, and back then the company was looking for a $5 million Series B round. The five-year-old company, previously raised a Series A round from Credit Suisse Securities Europe and won a £250,000 ($380,112) research grant from The Carbon Trust.

The innovation behind Isentropic’s idea is an advanced heat pump connected to a super simple, low cost energy storage design. Heat pumps are basically engines that can work in reverse and Isentropic’s device can store and release energy when needed. Founders and engineers Jon Howes and James Macnaghten developed the design of the heat pump a decade ago, and then brought on Mark Wagner as chairman to help with business direction.

An isentropic process (hence the name) is a thermodynamic process that can be reversed. Chairman Mark Wagner told me back in 2009 that the key to the company’s heat pump is that it can be reversed extremely efficiently, and has an isentropic efficiency (reversible efficiency) of 99 percent.

Energy storage comes into play because the Isentropic team decided to connect their heat pump to an energy storage system using two silos full of plain old gravel (or any cheap mineral or particle that can hold heat and cold well). Using the heat pump, the system compresses argon gas to produce a temperature differential and deposits heat and cold into the two separate large silos of gravel. Energy is stored in the gravel and when the process is reversed, it can be released.

The benefit of such a system are that it could be very low cost, quick and easy to set up, and could be built in a variety of locations. Utilities are looking to add more forms of energy storage to the power grid, to store energy when it’s not being used immediately, but many energy storage options are expensive and can only be built in certain locations (in elevations or underground reservoirs). Batteries are among the most expensive options, and the most location-specific choices are technologies like pumped hydro (push water up a hill and let it fall back down) and compressed air (stuff air into a container or underground hole and then release it).

Isentropic isn’t the only startup looking to develop a super low cost utility energy storage system using gravel. Energy Cache is a startup backed by Bill Gates, Claremont Creek Ventures, and Idealab that is building a system that carries buckets of gravel up and down a hill and stores energy in much the same way that pumped hydro does. Energy Cache is currently building a pilot system in Irwindale, Calif.

Isentropic will use part of the funds to build a demonstration project — sized at 1.5 MW — of its energy storage system at a primary substation owned by U.K. power company Western Power Distribution. This idea and technology is still in the very early stages, and it will take significant funds to scale it up to see if it works on a large scale.

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The San Diego startup puts kiosks in shopping malls and other retail spaces — particularly in locations near stores selling consumer electronics — that dispense cash, gift cards or coupons for mobile gadgets. The company has lined up buyers who promise to pay for the gadgets it collects, so when a consumer uses the kiosk to sell her phone, ecoATM can search for the best price from among its network of buyers and pass on part of that revenue to the consumer.

The company raised $14.4 million only over a year ago, and investors from that round, including Claremont Creek Ventures and Coinstar, also put money into the new round. New investors include PI Holdings, Moore Venture Partners and Koh Boon Hwee, who ecoATM describes as a “Singapore billionaire” (he was former chairman of Singapore Airlines and Singapore Telecom and worked at Hewlett-Packard).

EcoATM already has kiosks operating in about 50 locations in California and a smattering more in other states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Washington, according to the company’s website. The one at the Nebraska Furniture Mart was the company’s first installation and put in service in the fall of 2009. The company used to have a more ambitious plan of installing 200 kiosks by the end of 2010.

The new funding will enable the company to carry out a broader, national rollout, said ecoATM’s CEO, Tom Tullie, in a statement.

E-waste recycling isn’t a new idea, but making it convenient could help it become a habit. Even though people know recycling is a good thing, they may not go out of their way to hunt for recycling centers and drive there or ship their gadgets. Some recycling centers take old gadgets but don’t pay for them. So getting money or other goodies in return could be an attractive incentive.

The Consumers Electronics Association estimated back in 2008 that each American household owned 24 electronic devices. The head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, has called on electronic companies to think about how their gadgets could be recycled while they are designing products. In 2005, the U.S. generated 2 million tons of e-waste and only about 350,000 tons of them were recycled, the EPA said. The rest just ended up in landfills here and abroad.

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Ski lift storage has been one of those topics discussed in the hallways of energy storage conferences for years. Someone was out there, the conversation went, that wanted to use a solar- or wind-powered ski lift apparatus as a pump. It would pump gravel or water up a hill during sunny periods. At night or during peak power emergencies, the gravel or water could be released. The system essentially artificially supplies the elevation that nature left out.

Such a system could even harvest regenerative power on the way down. It’s part of a segment I call macro or terrestrial storage, i.e. large mechanical devices that store power through the power of geography and gravity. Bright Energy Storage Technologies, for instance, wants to put giant plastic bags shaped like sea cucumbers connected to air hoses in the ocean. Seawater will contain and pressurize the water for free. It sounds strange, but the device could deliver power for 2.5 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour, say the backers of the technology.

Research and project management company Escovale Consultancy Services talks about using a 100 million ton stone in a cavern to pressurize water,  similar to an idea being pursued by Gravity Power.  Think Stonehenge for the grid.

Then there are the micro-macro storage ideas: SustainX (compressing air in large tanks with water vapor), Isentropic (big tanks of hot gravel) and LightSail Energy (founded by an entrepreneur who entered college at age twelve.)

I scribbled down the name of the ski lift guys once at the Energy Storage Association conference in 2011, but I subsequently needed a paper towel and lost it forever.

Energy Cache

So who is that company? I am going to guess it is Energy Cache. Energy Cache wants to create a solar-powered pump for delivering materials to the top of mountains that can be released to produce energy. Here is one of their patents — note that one of the inventors is Bill Gross, the energetic dervish behind Idealab.

Claremont Creek Ventures is an investor and Idealab lists the company on its site. Gates himself wrote about the company in 2011 on his own blog.

Here’s a video of how the system works:

It’s an interesting idea, but one with many caveats. Terrestrial storage isn’t cheap. Compressed air energy storage, pumping megawatts of air into underground caves, has been around since the 1970s, but only a few trial systems have been built. Big projects take a lot of cash, and almost anything — geological surprises, changing world economics — can go wrong in the ten to fifteen years it can take to complete a project.

Environmental review can bottle up projects for years. Gridflex Energy has talked about building multi-megawatt hydro storage systems in Hawaii — the ocean would act as a free reservoir — and large systems in Montana. But good luck getting through the review process.

Some of the energy ideas from Idealab have stalled on the way to commercialization. Energy Innovations, a startup building concentrated solar photovoltaic technology, has reportedly put itself up for sale after struggling. Idealab also invested in Aptera, the three-wheeled electric car. The lightweight material Aptera used to build its car was fantastic — the car didn’t do so well.

Image courtesy of Andrew Miesem, Flickr creative commons and Energy Cache.

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Smart devices in buildings

Let’s drill down into devices used to light, and heat and cool buildings, and the efficiencies that can be delivered when these devices are networked and can talk to each other. Only 1 percent of the world’s buildings use systems to control and network lighting, and just 7 percent of lighting in commercial buildings is controlled by smart control systems.

But the efficiencies from networking lighting and using smart software to control the lighting in an efficient way, are clear. Earlier this month, a startup called Enlighted Inc. launched a product that places wireless sensors on every light fixture in a commercial or office building, and the company says by using distributed sensing, its system can cut energy consumption from lighting in office and commercial buildings by 50 to 75 percent. Enlighted Inc.’s first customer is green carpet company Interface Services, which used the lighting system to cut down on energy consumption of a 35,000 square foot facility in Acworth, Ga.

Smart lighting controls are so under used, and could be such a large market, that a half-dozen venture-backed startups have launched products. Enlighted Inc. is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Intel Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Competitor Adura Technologies is funded by NGEN, Claremont Creek Ventures, and VantagePoint Capital Partners. Redwood Systems, a lighting control company which sells a control and sensor system for LEDs that runs over an optimized version of Ethernet cables, raised money from Battery Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, Index Ventures and Mitsui & Co.

Beyond lighting, networked heating and cooling devices can cut loads of energy consumption, too. Regen Energy is a Canadian startup that makes wireless nodes that can connect to HVAC systems and it uses “swarm logic” software to manage the HVAC systems like a swarm of bees or a flock of fish. Last month, Regen said it had raised $5.5 million from investors and opened its first U.S. office in San Diego.

To note, these are a lot of startups in the smart building industry, and the industry is dominated by companies like Honeywell and Johnson Controls, who have been working on a less digital and networked version of the smart building for decades.

Smart devices on the grid

By now, I’m assuming you’ve all heard about the huge efficiency and business opportunities of the smart grid. While Cisco has changed its smart grid strategies in recent months, Cisco CEO John Chambers still insists that the smart grid poses a bigger opportunity than the Internet. Cisco’s original smart grid product is selling ruggedized grid-specific routers and switches.

Most utilities in the U.S. have at least started to plan a strategy for how they will enter the digital age and are increasingly looking to add connected devices to their grids to reduce blackouts, add more clean power, and engage more with their customers. Smart devices are being installed on all levels of the grid from the substations to transmission to distribution to each home.

Many startups have tried to enter the smart grid at the individual home energy management level, and most haven’t really succeeded yet. That’s because consumers aren’t all that interested in monitoring their own home energy, yet, and utilities are price sensitive to expensive home devices. But one day the digital home, will also be the smart energy home, it’s just a matter of how, and when.

Cell phone companies, who are building the networks for much of the Internet of Things, are looking to have their networks run the smart grid, too. Some utilities are game, like Consumers Energy, and Duke Energy, though many utilities are opting to build their own smart grid specific networks.

Smart devices in cars

And finally, vehicles and transportation, are also becoming part of the Internet of Things, and are benefiting from efficiency gains. Car sharing companies use the Internet and mobile phones to manage the use of vehicles down to 15-minute intervals, and install connections in each car to manage the service. Car sharing directly leads to the reduction of personal vehicle ownership, turns the car into a service, and more efficiently utilizes the car. Peer-to-peer car sharing, where people rent out their own cars into the a network, can lead to even more efficient uses of personal vehicles.

Less obvious are the efficiency gains that GPS navigation services have added to vehicles. If you know the most efficient way to drive to a destination, you save on gas.

Electric cars will be even more reliant on networks and software to manage the charge (so the utility’s grid isn’t overwhelmed) and so drivers can find the nearest charging outlet while on the go. Electric vehicles are only slowly rolling out, due to slow-moving car companies, and a sluggish economy.

Boring factor

Lighting, heating and cooling, the power grid, and cars, might not be the coolest applications for the Internet of Things (well, cars are pretty cool). But they are ways that the Internet of Things can make a major positive impact on developing far more energy-efficient systems. In an environment that has struggled to deliver clean power, biofuels, electric cars and other cleantech products, the Internet of Things could be one of the most important ways to influence energy use.

Images courtesy of Redwood Systems, Duke Energy, Regen Energy.

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BrightSource Senior Director of Corporate Communications Keely Wachs regaled the chirping story to me recently while I was on a tour of another BrightSource solar project in California. Call the trend the Googlization  of solar, or the way that software, big data, and wireless networks will help remake the modern energy infrastructure.

Evidence of BrightSource’s use of software and IT to design and build its flagship solar project, Ivanpah, in California, was very evident during my tour last month, too. Workers doing surveyor work on the Ivanpah site showed me how they use Trimble GPS navigation devices to collect data about soil, location and depth, and to make sure that important construction points — from transmission connections, to the bases of steel beams that will hold up 400-foot central boilers — are built in the necessary positions. When the three 400-foot tall central boilers are built at Ivanpah in the midst of the thousands of mirrors on the site, software will make sure the mirrors are positioned in such a way as to evenly spread the heat from the sun’s rays across the towers’ receivers.

BrightSource isn’t the only so-called solar thermal company — tech that uses the sun’s heat to generate electricity, instead of solar panels — to rely heavily on software. eSolar, a BrightSource competitor, designs its small mirrors and licenses software to manage those mirrors using its own brand of algorithms. eSolar’s engineers have put up videos on YouTube of some of the more novel things its software can get the mirrors to do, like spell out Happy Birthday for a company exec.

Clean power software

Bechtel exec Terry Copeland explains the layout of Ivanpah

Getting clean power from these types of massive utility-scale solar farms to the residences and businesses that will use them, will require another set of IT that makes the power grid a lot smarter. As David Crane, CEO and president of NRG Energy and Eric Dresselhuys, EVP and CMO of Silver Spring Networks, explained at our Green:Net 2011 event earlier this year, the future of the power grid will rely on using the digital intelligence of the smart grid to incorporate a growing amount of clean energy. Utilities will need smarter distribution and transmission systems to make sure their power grids can handle an influx of variable clean power (electricity that only flows when the sun shines).

It’s been fashionable lately for venture capitalists and young startups to focus more on solar software and services, rather than on starting new businesses in solar manufacturing. The bankruptcy of three solar manufacturing companies (Solyndra, SpectraWatt and Evergreen Solar) in recent weeks points to the value in the software and services approach over manufacturing. The encroachment of huge conglomerates, combined with the rapid growth of the Chinese solar companies in recent years, has made solar a commodity and new solar manufacturing an unsustainable business.

Then there’s the ability of software and the web to create the ecosystem around the solar buyer and the installer. Clean Power Finance, a solar software and financing startup, recently raised $25 million from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers, Claremont Creek Ventures, Clean Pacific Ventures, Sand Hill Angels and angel investor and co-founder Gary Kremen. Clean Power Finance says its software was used by 40 percent of U.S. residential solar systems in 2010.

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GE showed its interest in Project Frog back in June, when it revealed the second group of startups that had won funds from its Smart Grid Challenge program. Over the past year through its Smart Grid Challenge project, GE has identified dozens of startups in the building energy, power grid and energy software space and has made a variety of small investments of several million dollars in these firms.

Project Frog designs and makes buildings that are prefab, and it uses control systems and software to make the buildings far more energy-efficient than a traditional building. Because its designs are manufactured off-site and assembled at the construction zone via a building kit, Project Frog says its buildings can also be built far more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional buildings.

Frog says a typical design and construction project can take 6 months, and on the energy front Frog says its buildings use 25 percent less energy than a standard building. The company targets its building kits and designs for schools, stores, museums, commercial workplaces and health care. GE says it has started building a Frog Design building at its Learning Center in Ossining, New York.

Image courtesy of Project Frog, in San Francisco at Crissy Field

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