VentureBeat

Battery company R2EV and Fuel 2.0: Changing the electric vehicle paradigm?

If you’ve followed coverage on R2EV, you already know that some are skeptical about the company’s battery, designed to be swapped out in a network of “Greenbox” facilities nation wide.

Perceived problems with interoperability, improper installation or short circuiting and decreasing life cycle of a fleet of batteries have all been cited as reasons to stick with a more conventional battery pack. Talking to chief executive Alex Livingston, though, one gets the impression he’s already thought… Continue Reading

Politics and policy needed for the smart grid. Soon.

At GreenBeat 2009’s Politics and Policy session, the prevalent theme was the need for a simple, efficient legislation and regulation package for the U.S. power system.

Robert Gee of Gee Strategies went so far as to say, “Before anything is passed into law we need to get it past a panel of sixth graders, see if they can understand it. That is how simple we need to be going here.”

Unfortunately, Rick Counihan of Enernoc thinks the… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: Steve Westly spreads the Smart Grid gospel, says innovation should fly fast and loose

Steve Westly, former California state controller and now founder of the venture firm Westly Group, says he got interested in the Smart Grid and cleantech in order to save the world and make massive amounts of money in the process.

During a talk designed to counter Vinod Khosla’s Smart Grid skepticism in the session previous at GreenBeat 2009, he recalled putting solar panels up on president Jimmy Carter’s White House, and his heartbreak when president Ronald… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: At the international level, Smart Grid is about engagement (and standards)

During GreenBeat 2009’s International breakout panel, examining Smart Grid development on the global level, the prevalent theme was consumer engagement: in a regulated environment, like the U.K., how do you engage the consumer? How do you get them to change their behavior?

According to Ray Bell of WiMax for Smart Grid company Grid Net, it’s really about service. Cleaner energy, he claims, will become a marketable service because, even though it costs more, people will feel… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: New startup Locust could crush traditional data storage

Emerging from stealth mode today at GreenBeat 2009, Locust Storage, has developed 90 to 95 percent efficiency in data center energy consumption. CEO Seth Georgion, hailing from the oil and gas industry, says that, like so many game changing ideas, this one was drafted on a cocktail napkin. That was eight months ago.

As a data center manager for an oil and gas concern, Georgion was working in a field where a single survey could contain… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: Google’s Ed Lu declares PowerMeter a humanitarian mission

Google’s Ed Lu said today that his company’s entry into the energy network market doesn’t mean that utilities have to worry about the search giant generating or distributing electrical power.

Lu spoke at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 09 event today. Discussing Google’s Powermeter with Matt Marshall, Venture Beat Editor In Chief and CEO, he seemed to be playing his cards close to his vest on some topics but was smilingly helpful on others.

Marshall comments that PG&E might be… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: Save energy (and money!) — leave consumers out of it, energy management companies say

The most obvious answer to how to get consumers to embrace the Smart Grid is “money,” said the startup and demand response company leaders on GreenBeat 2009’s Consumers and Efficiency panel. The invisible hand of economics hath built the empire of Wal-Mart, could it not also raise up smarter utilities?

According to Gary Fromer, CEO of demand response firm CPower, the key is to give incentives. Claiming that big box stores like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and… Continue Reading

IBM adds two new utility partners to intelligent grid ops

IBM has announced two new utilities joining the Global Intelligent Utilities Network Coalition. CPFL Energia from Brazil and Liander from the Netherlands are now members of the collective designed to push adoption of smarter energy distribution programs. The IUN Coalition now serves about 100 million customers worldwide.

IBM’s Energy & Utilities Industry manager Guido Bartels said in yesterday’s release that “the addition of these new members furthers the global scope of the coalition and accelerates how… Continue Reading

Carlos Ghosn & The Coalition Push for more, more, more

Nissan-Renault CEO Carl Ghosn seems to be taking career advice from Frank White lately; wherever there is an opportunity to start making some money, he wants in. Recognizing that full size vehicles were a cash cow in the U.S., Ghosn wanted his cut. Shortly after taking the reins of Nissan in June of 1999, he built a factory in Mississippi to start churning out big trucks like the Titan and the Armada.

Now, the field has… Continue Reading

Smart Grid Index-based Fund launches on Nasdaq

The NASDAQ OMX Group has launched a new exchange traded fund (ETF). Called the First Trust NASDAQ(R) Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund (Nasdaq: GRID). Based on their Smart Grid Infrastructure Index (QGRD), the ETF is managed by First Trust Advisors and listed on NASDAQ.

QGRD is a market capitalization index that includes companies whose chief concern is the U.S. electric grid. This includes software development, network, hardware and metering companies, as well as others… Continue Reading

GE wins with new China railway deals

General Electric’s latest in a string of joint ventures with China is a plan to transition its manufacturing of train-based engine components to Beijing.

By the end of 2011, testing and re-building of components like turbochargers and power assemblies will take place in China. Starting in 2013, engines will be assembled, tested and rebuilt in Beijing as well. Providing these components keeps approximately 120 manufacturing jobs in the U.S., though jobs in the test and rebuilding… Continue Reading

Honeywell partners with SoCal Ed to run demand response

Honeywell announced that it has been awarded $11.4 million dollars in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy. This grant is part of the single largest power infrastructure investment in U.S. history, totaling $3.4 billion. Honeywell is one of the four non-utility companies to receive grants.

Honeywell will be using the money to support demand response programs to be enacted in cooperation with Southern California Edison (SCE). The program will support almost 700 customers (primarily… Continue Reading

Widetronix goes nuclear to build a 25-year battery

A company called Widetronix has developed a 25-year battery. Reminiscent of Heinlein’s micro-fission reactors that could be worn on a belt, beta voltaic battery cells last 25 years or more, using semiconductors to turn high energy electrons known as beta particles thrown off by radioactive decay into a usable current.

The technology is 50 years old, but semiconductors back in the day required more radioactive substances to achieve the same (tiny) power output. This made them… Continue Reading

Nissan’s wireless EV charging could leave Coulomb, Better Place in the dust

Electric vehicles have come a long way in the last two years. Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive have proven that EVs can be fast and decently ranged, even sexy. Nissan is promising to make them fairly cheap. General Motors is working on something any flag waving urban American would be proud to drive. But there’s still one hitch: battery technology — we don’t have anything better than the lithium-ion cells currently in use, and only… Continue Reading

Has ERRA just launched the future of advanced batteries?

In energy storage, fantastic claims of game-changing technologies launch, peak and fall rapidly – only rarely does an actual product result. In a press release, ERRA Incorporated of San Antonio, Tex., announced their acquisition of a set of rights and patents for a “breakthrough battery technology” to be marketed as the YESS (Your Energy Storage Solution) Battery from ERRA, Inc. The press release made no mention of the battery’s chemistry, only that it was “Simply… Continue Reading

Chinese Suntech eyes panel assembly site in Arizona

Chinese solar company Suntech Power Holdings is primed to become the first recipient of Arizona’s property tax reduction and tax credit incentives policies. With a 100,000 square-foot solar panel manufacturing facility in the works outside of Phoenix, it hopes to ramp up production by fall 2010.

Suntech says the plant will employ 75 people full time from the moment it opens its shipping bay doors. If north American demand for solar panels follows the trrack Suntech… Continue Reading

Electric drag-races: The trend toward performance-focused EVs

Acceleration is a U.S. tradition, harkening back to a time when Main Street on a Friday night was an endless series of drag races a la American Graffiti. Back then, a 1974 GTO ran a quarter mile in 16.4 seconds. But today, the car market is seeing a strong trend toward MPG rather than MPH. Still, there are a few diehards out there who long to be pushed back in their heat when they hit… Continue Reading

Chrysler scraps EV program, forsaking bailout promises

When Chrysler accepted its more than $12.5 billion in government bailout funds to stave off bankruptcy, it promised to produce more fuel efficient vehicles and rush its electric models to market by 2011. Now, almost three years later, the company has launched zero hybrid cars and has canceled plans to develop electric vehicles under the Chrysler brand.

The decision — a major reversal in attitude and strategy — came from Fiat, which received a 20 percent… Continue Reading

McLaren F1 designer goes green with T.27

Gordon Murray — known best as the designer of the McLaren F1 and the Mercedez Benz SLR McLaren (some of the fastest, most expensive and coveted cars ever made) — has unveiled plans for an all-electric car dubbed the T.27.

Shockingly homely, the prototype for the T.27 has more in common with a Studebaker armored car or a Soviet light tank than the sleek beauties Murray has created before. But it does promise to be substantially… Continue Reading

Australian Geodynamics wins $90M to make hot-rock power a reality

Geodynamics, a company that draws emissions-free power from hot fractured rocks beneath the earth’s surface, has just won $90 million from Australia’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program.

The Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) technique is basically the extraction of the earth’s heat from broken granite over three kilometers deep in the planet’s crust. The rocks are astoundingly hot — making it sustainable to siphon off some of the heat for electricity (assuming the earth’s core doesn’t cool down… Continue Reading