Glacier Bay solidifies $10M for power management systems
Glacier Bay, maker of high efficiency power and thermal management systems for trucking and aquatic applications, announced that it raised $10 million in new capital from the Westly Group, New Enterprise Associates and Quercus Trust.
The 18-year old company shifted to building energy-efficient HVAC and power generation systems in the last two years. This has proved much more lucrative than its previous focus on researching related topics.
The Union City, Calif. company’s lead product right now is… Continue Reading
Let there be light: eSolar switches on first U.S. solar thermal tower
The U.S. solar industry just took a great leap forward with eSolar’s announcement that its 5-megawatt Sierra SunTower is now fully operational. Located in Lancaster, Calif., the array uses 24,000 mirrors to concentrate sunlight on two 160-foot towers.
The facility is technically a solar thermal plant, meaning that instead of solar cells converting sunlight directly to energy, the light is used to heat water located at the top of the towers. The steam generated turns a… Continue Reading
Advanced Telemetry gets infusion for wireless energy-management dashboard
Advanced Telemetry has taken an undisclosed amount of second-round funding from existing investors Quercus Trust and 21Ventures to continue developing its energy consumption management platform for residential and commercial use.
The San Diego company’s lead product is a wireless panel called the EcoView that classifies energy consumption in a building as low, moderate or high. Some of the money raised in the recent round will be used to beef up its sales, with the rest going… Continue Reading
ETV Motors powers up with $12M for longer-range hybrid engines
ETV Motors, an Israeli company developing alternative powertrains for hybrid-electric vehicles, has raised $12 million in a first round of funding to fuel further research. If successfully launched, its “micro-turbine” technology could be disruptive, causing plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle (PHEV) makers to abandon the internal combustion engines they have long relied upon.
Basically, the company has miniaturized airplane turbines, which produce both heat and electricity, yet are lighter and more compact than normal gas-powered engines. It claims… Continue Reading
Graphene Energy raises $500,000 for ultracapacitor storage
Graphene Energy, an Austin, Tex. startup based on technology from the University of Texas and Virginia’s College of William and Mary, has taken a $500,000 seed round from Quercus Trust and 21Ventures.
Ultracapacitors (insulating layers between conductors that house electric fields) are being explored by a variety of startups for their energy storage, usually as a component accompanying batteries in electric cars. Graphene is seeking to improve the technology by improving capacitance, or the amount of… Continue Reading
Lightwave raises $13M to improve thin-film solar
Thin film solar cell maker Lightwave Power brought in $13 million in first-round funding to improve conversion rates of sunlight into electricity. Right now, the average conversion rate is about 9 to 15 percent. The Cambridge, Mass. company says it’s working on thin-film solutions to actually alter the frequencies of light from infrared and ultraviolet into varieties that are more easily absorbed and turned into power.
The round came from Quercus Trust and 21 Ventures LLC…. Continue Reading
Evolution Robotics rolling toward an automated world
Banking on the idea that helper robots will be as ubiquitous in homes and offices as they are today in factories, Evolution Robotics has raised almost $14 million to continue developing both software and hardware for a variety of self-directed machines.
Evolution, an Idealab startup founded by renowned entrepreneur Bill Gross, hit the stage in 2002 with the ER1, a “personal robot system” that was essentially just a laptop mounted in four wheels. Equipped with a… Continue Reading
Sencera nabs another $15.6M for solar cells
While the overall economy may be in a bad spot, investments in green funds and renewable energy startups are showing little sign of waning, with solar firms like SoloPower, Nanosolar and AVA Solar leading the way. Its financial prowess may not match that of its better established competitors, but Charlotte, North Carolina-based Sencera isn’t doing too badly either, capping a second round of funding with $15.6 million from Quercus Trust.
The round will help the company… Continue Reading
With $15M new funding, Cyrium will fight Boeing and Emcore for the concentrating solar market
When we talk about concentrating photovoltaics (CPV), it’s the lenses, mirrors and tracking systems that focus sunlight onto solar cells that get all the attention. But why not the cells themselves? A little-discussed handicap in CPV is the near-monopoly two public companies, Boeing’s (BA) Spectrolab and Emcore (EMKR), enjoy on high-efficiency cells.
That’s starkly different from the other solar markets, in which dozens of startups are vying for attention. One reason the two companies reign uncontested… Continue Reading
Hydro Green Energy caps off first funding round in growing “hydrokinetic” market
Hydro Green Energy, another player in the burgeoning hydrokinetic sector, has just capped a $2.6 million first funding round led by the Quercus Trust.
The Houston-based company holds 13 preliminary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for projects in Alaska and Mississippi; it expects its first project, on the Mississippi River in Minnesota, to begin operations in late August. Another four projects that will be built downstream of existing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’… Continue Reading
Selling solar on the conservative side of town
Republican “red” states hate environmentalism, right? And California is the place to be for cleantech startups, no? Not so, says cleantech installer Standard Renewable Energy, which does its business in middle America and just closed off a second round of venture funding.
SRE, headed by a former Enron trader, is busy selling solar cells, wind turbines, green insulation, efficient cooling and other systems to people in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states the environmental elite enjoy… Continue Reading
GridPoint, a well-funded smart-grid startup, raises $15M more
GridPoint, a smart-grid company that can intelligently manage energy sources and storage for utilities, has pushed its total equity raise to $102 million with an add-on of $15 million to its fourth round.
The company works to distribute the power and storage of utilities, as well as tying in unreliable renewable sources like wind and solar power. The GridPoint SmartGrid Platform is the locus of these services, a node in homes and businesses that communicates back… Continue Reading
LiveFuels raises $10M to turn algae into alternative fuel
LiveFuels, a Menlo Park, Calif. company seeking to turn algae into an alternative fuel, has raised a $10 million round of capital.
The investor was David Gelbaum at the Quercus Trust, which has previously backed environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Wildlands Conservancy.
We reported earlier that LiveFuels was looking to raise the money, and ran a column by LifeFuels’ founding investor Rich Hilt about why using algae makes sense.
Why algae? Well,… Continue Reading