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Solar startup Semprius to open first factory next week

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:33:59 +0000

Following a Summer that hasn’t been too kind to solar manufacturing startups, Semprius announced on Monday that next week the startup will open up its first factory in Henderson, North Carolina. Semprius is a semiconductor developer that makes solar modules for concentrating solar photovoltaic systems, which use mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight onto highly efficient solar cells.

In recent months two startups that make this type of concentrating solar technology have struggled. In July Amonix said it was forced to shutter its factory near Las Vegas, and last week GreenVolts said it had laid off more than 60 of its 80 workers and is looking for a buyer. ABB, GreenVolts investor, said it decided to stop funding GreenVolts because of the uncertainty in the solar panel market.

The price of solar panels has plummeted in recent months. While that has led to a boom in solar panel installations in the U.S., it has wreaked havoc on the bottom lines of solar panel manufacturers. First Solar and SunPower are turning to solar project development and solar financing programs to help generate revenue. Solar concentrating system makers have to compete with these low cost solar panels, too.

Like ABB’s former connection with GreenVolts, Semprius has a power company in its corner: Siemens. Last year Siemens said it bought a 16 percent stake in the startup and the companies also have a joint partnership to develop and deploy a “plug-and-play” CPV demonstration system based on Semprius’ solar module arrays and Siemens’ automation and control components.

Semprius’ technology is based around what it calls a micro-transfer printing technology, which stamps semiconducting material onto a substrate, such as glass or plastic (see a video here). The technology is a faster and less expensive way to produce semiconductor devices – in this case solar modules, but it could be extended to other industries such as disk drives – than current manufacturing techniques on the market.

Semprius is focusing first on developing modules for solar concentrating photovoltaics that use gallium arsenide-based, multi-junction solar cells coupled with cheap optics to concentrate solar energy onto the high-efficiency cells. The solar modules have a 33.9 percent conversion efficiency of solar light into electricity, which is one of the most efficient in the world.

Semprius has raised close to $40 million from ARCH Venture Partners, Illinois Ventures, Intersouth Partners, In-Q-Tel, Morgan Creek Capital Management and Siemens Venture Capital, as well as $8 million in state and county incentives. The company says North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue will speak at the opening ceremony next week on September 26, and the factory will eventually create 250 jobs.

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ABB responds on why it decided to stop investing in GreenVolts

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 20:04:16 +0000

Earlier this week solar startup GreenVolts told me that it had lost a major investment from power company ABB and as a result laid off more than 60 of its 80 employees, and is now looking for a buyer. Greentech Media first reported the troubles from the startup.

You’re probably wondering, so what happened? ABB was previously the lead investor in GreenVolts’ latest round and had committed $20 million of the $35 million round. Andrew Tang, ABB’s Managing Director of its venture arm, ABB Technology Ventures, gave me some more context for why ABB decided not to continue to fund the company:

Our decision to not further invest in GV has nothing to do with its team or technology, in fact both of which are recognized as world class. This decision reflects the uncertainty in the PV market, and the lack of transparency on when it will stabilize. I hope this decision demonstrates that we are a disciplined investor, who won’t sell winners too early, nor throw good money after bad. We are optimistic about the industrial and cleantech space, and ABB Technology Ventures will continue to seek and make financially sound investments in innovative start-up companies which have technologies or business model of strategic interest to ABB. In fact, we currently have an active global pipeline and evaluate more than 1,000 deals a year.

So that’s the story from ABB.

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GreenVolts loses ABB as investor, lays off bulk of staff

Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:44:06 +0000

Solar startup GreenVolts has hit a real rough patch. GreenVolts CEO David Gudmundson told me in an interview on Wednesday afternoon that the company recently lost investment support from power company ABB, and as a result has laid off more than 60 of its 80 person staff. Greentech Media first reported troubles at the company Wednesday morning.

“What happened is that we had a sudden and unexpected change in support from our strategic investor, and that has affected our access to funding. This was a surprise given our recent progress,” said Gudmundson. GreenVolts raised $35 million in funding in December 2011, with $20 million of that coming from ABB. Gudmundson told me that ABB had pulled out of funding the company.

GreenVolts still has a small core team in place, and the team’s plan is now to look for a buyer of its technology or assets. The leftover staff will also still continue to offer customer support on the systems level.

GreenVolts is a seven-year-old company that makes solar concentrating photovoltaic systems that use both solar cells and lenses to produce electricity. The company makes a fully end-to-end array that includes modules, trackers, inverters, and energy management software and also installs projects.

This year has a been a very difficult one for solar manufacturers, both solar panel makers and companies like GreenVolts that make solar concentrating photovoltaic systems. The price of solar panels has plummeted, which has led to panel makers selling panels for below market rates. (On the flip side that has led to a boost in solar panel installations.)

Solar concentrating photovoltaic systems (also called CPV) are also a new, unproven technology in the solar industry. They’re a hybrid of using mirrors to concentrate sunlight (like some of the large solar farms being built in the deserts use) and small cells that convert the concentrated sunlight into electricity. Startup Amonix, which also makes CPV systems, also recently laid off its staff and shuttered its factory.

GreenVolts has struggled and pivoted a bit over the years. The company moved away from its original carousel tracker CPV design (images of that here) and had been working on a newer CPV tech (check out more photos on Ed Gunther’s site). I visited the company’s offices and test site last month and took these photos of the system.

But GreenVolts had seemed to be getting on track in recent months. The company announced investment from ABB in December, as well as a partnership with ABB where ABB would sell and market its systems. Having the power player in its corner was a validation of its technology. Was. And now having that company pull out its support is devastating to the company.

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How next-gen solar tech can break through in a tough market

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:00:45 +0000

The past 18 months will be remembered as a time when solar manufacturers delivered ugly earnings reports and even witnessed some of their smaller peers face bankruptcy. That’s because the price of silicon — a main ingredient in traditional solar panels — has plummeted and subsidies from China have flooded the market with an oversupply of cheap panels.

So what do you do if you’re a startup that’s been head-down over the past few years developing next-generation solar technologies? Hope and pray? Well, over the past couple of weeks I’ve chatted with a variety of solar companies, and these are some options for how to survive and even break out in this difficult market:

Find big partners: A startup in Fremont, Calif., called GreenVolts, is making a next-gen solar concentrating photovoltaic system, which concentrates light onto tiny high efficiency solar cells. The company has forged a very important partnership with power giant ABB, and ABB will market and sell GreenVolt’s systems; ABB has also made an investment in the startup. The move is a validation of the next-gen technology, and also will open new doors to major utility and industrial customers.

In the world of next-generation thin film solar technology, HelioVolt found a white knight in Korean giant SK Group, which invested in the company, and Miasole has been putting out a very vocal call for big partners for months.

Outsource manufacturing: GreenVolts also made an early and smart decision to have Chinese manufacturers make all of its solar gear for its systems. That means that GreenVolts can benefit from the efficient manufacturing methods of international giants. GreenVolts also wasn’t in the middle of building out a capital-intensive factory when the solar market crunch hit. In contrast, another solar concentrating photovoltaic startup, Amonix, was forced to close its Las Vegas factory last month, and the company has essentially shut down.

Look to services: While the solar cell and panel market stabilizes, some big manufactures that have been struggling have turned to services, like solar project development and solar financing. SunPower looked to solar leases as a bright spot in its earnings this week, while First Solar is touting itself as a major project developer now.

Control and monitoring center at GreenVolts

IT it: Focusing on the efficiencies of adding digital technology to solar systems can offer a capital light way of innovating around solar. QBotix is a startup that’s making a next-generation solar tracker, and it’s relying on sensors and cloud computing to deliver real-time tracking of its systems. NEA partner Ravi Viswanathan said in a recent interview that he thought software and networking in combination with solar and energy technologies have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible.

Go downstream: While the solar cell and panel crunch is making it hard for one section of manufacturing firms, the tough market is also providing opportunity for another sector: the downstream. Marketing, financing and project solar development are all booming. New business models in these areas could still thrive, as this New York Times article pointed out this week.

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6 ways software rules the clean power economy

Ucilia Wang — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:59:38 +0000

The clean power economy needs hardware of course — billions of dollars have gone into creating more efficient solar cells, meters with two-way communication features, and more powerful batteries for storing renewable energy and running electric cars. But software has been the key focus for investors lately, when it comes to new ways to deploy these clean power systems.

It takes smart software and analytics tools to network clean power devices, integrate them into the electric grid, make money from them and educate consumers about the benefit of owning them. We wrote about the need for more software and services back in 2010. Sungevity, a solar installer, is holding a solar hackathon this weekend in Oakland, Calif., to promote building mobile and web apps.

Here’s a look at how software is making a difference:

1. Power forecasts: Solar and wind power production varies because it depends heavily on weather conditions. But utilities are used to managing the steady stream of power from fossil fuel-based power plants. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. said in a recent report that better wind energy forecasts are needed since data shows that a wind farm could produce anywhere from zero to about 21 percent of its stated production capacity during hours of peak demand.

Because solar energy could come from large power plants or little rooftop systems scattered across cities, predicting solar power output and its impact on the local grid presents a different set of challenges. Creating accurate forecasts for wind and solar will require pulling lots of data on wind speed, clouds and other meteorological conditions. AWS Truepower and WindLogics are two companies that have been at this for a while. More recently, Clean Power Research announced a data and forecasting service for managing a fleet of solar energy systems.

2. Putting energy storage to work: Many pilot projects are underway to see how battery systems could complement wind and solar farms by banking these intermittent sources of power and releasing it into the grid to meet peak demand or stabilize the grid (maintaining a balance of supply and demand is crucial to avoid back outs and other problems). These are largely projects that involve large wind or solar farms. But in the future, energy storage systems could make their way to small businesses and homes and enable their owners to also make money from selling, say, solar power back to the utilities.

Carlos Coe, chairman of battery developer Xtreme Power, told me the bulk of the company’s technical expertise actually lies in the software that controls its battery system to make sure it works well with the control system of a utility or power project developer. Companies that are focusing on developing energy storage software include Growing Energy Labs and Greensmith.

3. Energy diets: Energy costs are set to go up overtime, and that has prompted many commercial and industrial building owners to consider technologies that will help them rein in costs. Being able to accurate predict daily or even hourly energy use and take quick steps to reduce or maintain the amount of electricity being consumed throughout the day requires some hefty data crunching, and that’s what companies like startup GridNavigator are doing. This type of software gives building owners a finer control of their energy use.

Another way to reduce energy bills is to sell unused power back to the utility or grid operator. Some utilities pay their customers to dial down power use during times of high demand in order to avoid blackouts. You can expect new software being developed to serve this demand-response market.

4. Home automation: Energy management equipment and software developers have historically targeted the commercial and industrial building owners, who tend to be heavy energy users and might be more willing to invest in energy efficiency retrofits to cut costs. The average consumers, on the other hand, doesn’t really give a hoot about monitoring their energy use hourly or daily and adjusting their lifestyle accordingly. At least not manually.

Automating this process, on the other hand, will make a big difference. And this is why devices such as so-called “learning thermostats” from startups like Nest can be a game changer. A learning thermostat figures out its owner’s energy consumption behavior and adjusts the heating and cooling of a home accordingly.

5. Building an ideal solar roof: Solar installers such as Sungevity and SolarCity have all touted their software development expertise in marketing and engineering solar electric systems (SolarCity sought to build an energy auditing and retrofit business by developing software that performs more accurate energy audits and can better quantify saving). Geostellar recently raised nearly $14 million to build a business that pulls together a bunch of data – including weather, roof slope, property values, electricity rates and government incentives for installing solar panels – and sells the crunched data to installers and others who want to hone in on their ideal customers. The company also claims to be able to estimate power production of solar panels on each roof.

6. Solar monitoring: Solar energy systems – whether they are on a rooftop or in the desert – are meant to be long-term investments, so there is a need for good monitoring and management software to pinpoint problems quickly. The ability to check the performance of individual solar panels is partly what makes microinverters – which convert the direct current from the solar panels to alternating current for the grid –an appealing option.

Making monitoring data easily accessible is just as important. GreenVolts, a developer solar energy system that uses mirrors to boost the power produced from solar cells, recently made it possible for its customers to monitor their GreenVolts systems on their smart phones and other mobile gadgets.

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Solar startup GreenVolts finds a friend in ABB

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:08:23 +0000

Solar startup GreenVolts has found a friend in power giant ABB, in a very difficult solar market this year. On Wednesday GreenVolts, which makes solar concentrating photovoltaic technology, announced that it has raised another $35 million, with $20 million coming from ABB. At the same time GreenVolts has launched a new larger end-to-end solar power system.

ABB has been pretty aggressive at making investments in, and establishing partnerships with, innovative young startups. The company also has invested in electric car charger companies ECOtality, and green data center company Power Assure, among others.

GreenVolts is a six-year-old company that makes solar concentrating photovoltaic systems that use both solar cells and lenses to produce electricity. The company now makes a fully end-to-end array that includes modules, trackers, inverters, and energy management software.

GreenVolts has moved away from its original carousel tracker CPV design (images of that here) and had been working on a newer CPV tech (check out more photos on Ed Gunther’s site). GreenVolts has now released more details about its fully redesigned larger-scale solar array, which CNET describes as making it “The Apple of High End Solar.”

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Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy

Jeff St. John — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:00:09 +0000

Greentech marked its best year ever in 2010, and part of that is thanks to the wealth of activity across sectors during the fourth quarter. Global investment in clean energy surged, and while wind power remained the biggest greentech area, solar power saw the fastest growth. The energy efficiency sector appears to have more room for smaller players to make their mark amidst a rapidly maturing market. Meanwhile, China’s stance as a growing greentech giant continued to complicate its relationship with the United States. Companies mentioned in this report include General Electric, Intel, ZigBee, iControl, People Power and EnerNOC. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

GreenVolts Looking to Raise Close to $40M

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:20:06 +0000

Updated: GreenVolts, a startup which builds solar concentrating photovoltaic systems (CPV) that use both solar cells and lenses ~~mirrors~~, is raising even more funds. On top of raising $7.5 million in debt in August, GreenVolts is looking to raise $38.8 million in equity funding, according to an SEC filing, and has closed on $22.44 million of the round from existing investors Oak Investment Partners.

The 5-year-old company, which won the California Cleantech Open in 2007, previously announced a contract with northern California utility PG&E to build a 3 MW power plant that was planned to go online first in 2009, and then in 2010. According to blogger Edgar Gunther earlier this month, this (photo to the left) is what’s up at the spot of the Byron, Calif.-based so-called GV1 project. I’m not sure if the project is fully up and running or not (doesn’t look like it), and I’m waiting to hear back more on its status from the company.

Update: GreenVolts PR tells me that the PG&E site is being used for “staging and testing,” and that GreenVolts has “not started full bore installation.” So basically it hasn’t really even started any substantial construction. But GreenVolts also says it expects to complete the 3 MW deployment in 2011.

GreenVolts has moved away from its original carousel tracker CPV design (images of that here) and is using newer CPV tech (check out more photos on Gunther’s site). The tech switch is perhaps one reason the company needs such a sizable round of funding. Another reason is it likely needs funds to help build out its GV1 project more substantially. The company has had other hurdles, including bringing in a new CEO a year ago.

In September 2008, GreenVolts said it had raised $30 million in Series B funds to help it get the first megawatt of its GV1 project online. So at this point, if the almost $40 million is closed in early 2011, GreenVolts will be pretty close to $100 million in funding (or $90 million, given they’ve reportedly raised $50 million already).

The concentrating PV (CPV) solar market has its own problems. It’s a hybrid technology that uses both solar cells and mirrors to concentrate sunlight, so the systems fit into a niche that’s somewhere between massive solar thermal plants in the desert and solar PV on rooftops. CPV promises to significantly reduce the amount of solar cells need for a solar project, which make up a big part of the cost of a solar energy system, but the tech relies on motorized trackers and direct sunlight (can’t make use of diffuse light), which has made it less attractive for developers and regions with many cloudy days. Plus, the price for solar cells that go into solar panels has fallen by at least 50 percent during the past two years, making solar panels a whole lot more appealing for developers and utilities.

GreenVolts was one of the first companies to win a high-profile utility deal in this area, but has since been surpassed by competitors including Amonix and SolFocus. Utility Public Service Co., part of Xcel Energy, has agreed to buy power from a 30 MW project (the largest CPV project in North America) being developed by Cogentrix Energy and using CPV gear from Amonix. Amonix recently raised $129.4 million from the likes of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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Photos courtesy of Gunther Portfolio.

Earth2Tech's Top 7 Cities for Cleantech

Amy Westervelt — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:00:35 +0000

Back before the stimulus package or the Waxman-Markey bill, when no one was sure whether tax credits for renewable energy would be re-upped or allowed to fade away, U.S. mayors decided to adopt their own climate policy. In signing on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (a pact to strive for the greenhouse gas reductions targeted by the Kyoto Protocol), cities such as Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco sent a “we’ll do it on our own” statement in response to the lack of federal policy.

Since the launch of the agreement in 2005, some 500 more cities have signed on (and counting). And while some cities just signed the document and moved on, others have used the initiative to draft further innovative strategies that deliver meaningful reductions. The most effective strategies, by far, have been those that bring sustainability initiatives into the office of economic development and turn the city into an early adopter of “green” products and services. It’s exactly this sort of strategy that makes the following cities the best in the country to be a cleantech start-up. In a report, Living Cities Foundation interviewed sustainability directors and gathered data from city sustainability departments throughout the country. We’ve landed on the following seven as the best spots to start and grow a cleantech company (more interviews from the report here).

San Jose
Boston
Austin
San Francisco
Seattle
Portland
Denver

First up: San Jose »

Image credit: arimoore.

Go to page 2 (of 8) on GigaOM .

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Over 9,000 citations in one day in NYC for driving while using a cell phone

James Kendrick — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:00:41 +0000

The issue of driving while talking on a cell phone has two distinct sides, and no matter which side of that issue you are on, if you spend much time in a car you see this every day. We’ve all heard the stories of fatal car accidents caused by drivers on cell phones. Studies have indicated that talking on a phone while driving impacts the driver’s reaction time in a manner similar to intoxication.

Many major cities in the U.S. ban driving while talking, although most of those allow the use of headsets or other hands-free solutions. Personally I think it’s the lack of concentration on driving due to the phone conversation as much as holding a handset, so I’m not sure that headsets make that much difference. My own city of Houston has ordinances that ban the use of phones while driving in school zones which seems like a good thing.

New York City recently had a one-day clamp-down on driving while using a phone and issued over 9,000 citations to drivers talking on phones. That number is amazing even for a large city like NYC, and it indicates the law is not impacting the practice enough. Another statistic that I find amazing is that over 195,000 citations were issued in NYC in 2008. That plainly shows that the $120 fine is not a big deterrent to those who talk and drive. Maybe it’s time to force the use of gadgets that prevent phone calls in cars? These are typically designed for teen drivers but they’re not the only ones doing all the texting or talking.

(via cellular-news)

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