Using a neutron gun and an infrared imaging camera at a location dubbed “Yellowknife Bay,” researchers found signs of hydration: water molecules bound to minerals in Martian rock.

“With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area,” Melissa Rice, a CalTech researcher, said in a NASA statement. “These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix.”

Detection of water is important as NASA scientists attempt to determine if Mars ever supported life in the past … and if it could again in the future.

One interesting facet of the Curiosity rover is its international composition. The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument, which detects hydrogen, is Russian-made. The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) that investigated the clay-like material is from Canada. And, of course, the majority of the rover is of American manufacture.

“We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay,” said Maxim Litvak from the Moscow-based Space Research Institute. “More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation.”

Curiosity is seven months into a scheduled two-year mission.

photo credit: nasa hq photo via photopin cc

NASA’s Curiosity rover analyzed its first scoop on Mars and found water molecules in “higher than anticipated” quantities, according to an announcement from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory today.

The water found attached to sand or other particles is “not unusual,” according to JPL, but the quantities are surprising as the team looks for organic compounds in Martian soil.

Currently, the Mars rover is stationed at “Rocknest,” which the JPL team choose for its dusty conditions. They researchers felt that Curiosity could use the dirt here to clean out its arm, which scoops up material and delivers it to analysis tools inside its body. The arm needed to be cleaned of any Earth materials that could get mixed in with the Martian samples.

This was the first time Curiosity has used all of its instruments in analyzing the regolith, or Martian soil. This included its Sample Analysis at Mars tool (SAM), the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin), and others. Indeed, it cooked some of the dirt in a tiny oven inside its body.

The regolith here revealed volcanic-like properties similar to Hawaii as well as glass particles. Some of the dirt further revealed carbon-based chlorine and oxygen compound called perchlorate. This was first discovered by NASA’s Pheonix Lander. “One-carbon organics” were also created when dirt was heated inside the tiny oven, meaning that we could be one-step closer to understanding how life could form on Mars. We’re still a long way off, however, because NASA says the chemical reactions that formed the carbon may have been the product of an Earthly object mixing in with the regolith.

After Curiosity is done analyzing the martian dirty here, it will head off toward its ultimate destination Mount Sharp. Its mission is to determine whether or not the Gale Crater ever had the environment that could have sustained microorganisms.

Curiosity scoops image via JPL

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness. Startling statistics like these can make it hard to stomach the millions of dollars funneled into the latest social networking or e-commerce app, but a new wave of social entrepreneurship is taking on the idea that doing good and making money are mutually exclusive concepts.

Hydros manufactures reusable water bottles with built-in filters. Reusable water bottles are hardly innovative but Hydros’ unique approach to social entrepreneurship and use of internet platforms to spread its mandate is.

The water crisis is a massive global problem. 1 in 7 people lack access to clean water and 3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases. Furthermore, 38 billion (billion!) water bottles are discarded into landfills every year. After learning about these issues, founders Jay Parekh, Aakash Mathur, and Winston Ibrahim forsook traditional career paths to tackle the crisis head on.

The water bottle is the consumer product that funds Operation Hydros, “the movement to fight the global water crisis.” For every bottle purchased, $1 dollar is contributed to a rural water project. The company is still in the early stages of distribution, but has already helped implement a water piping system in Cameroon and a sanitation project in Kenya. Hydros recently partnered with Engineers Without Borders to ensure each water system is implemented effectively and well maintained.

“People think there is either the nonprofit world where you won’t make any money, or the business world where you won’t do anything good,” he said. “I want to dedicate my life to proving this wrong.  I want to prove you can create a successful business that returns money to founders and shareholders, while still addressing a social issue.”

Ibrahim was raised in Silicon Valley and leveraged his knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to get Operation Hydros off the ground. He reached out to investors, recruited renowned entrepreneurs to the advisory board, and spearheaded digital sales and marketing efforts. Hydros has received investment from angel investors, venture firms, and from crowdfunding site Fundable to bring the product to market.

Now, the company is starting its major distribution push. It is sold in Whole Foods in certain markets around the country and has worked with tech startups and other organizations on “cobranding” initiatives. The bottles are also available online on e-commerce sites like Amazon and Groupon. There are even potential celebrity sponsorships in the pipeline.

The bottle itself filters out toxins and chemicals in 20 seconds. Hydros also seeks to combat the water crisis by promoting more eco-friendly habits, like cutting down on bottled water waste. Ibrahim said there is strong interest amongst consumers for this type of product and business model.

“A feature of our generation is to care about the broader world,” he said. “Millenials were raised in this internet age, we have so much access to information and see the issues that are going on. There is opportunity inherent in problems of the word. Our generation is primed to see lack of food, lack of water, lack of jobs as a chance to create benefits for society and cause change.”

Ibrahim recently visited the White House as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, “the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.” The massive growth of this event (115 countries; nearly 24,000 partner organizations; more than 37,000 activities;  directly engaging more than 7 million people” is a testament to the growing belief around the world, amongst entrepreneurs, business people, politicians, and development agencies, that startups can cause widespread, meaningful change.

Electricity infrastructure provider ABB, often described as one of the “Four horsemen of the power grid“, just boosted its water business by leading a $6 million investment in water infrastructure monitoring startup TaKaDu.

“Water is a key focus area for ABB and this investment will further strengthen our power and automation offering for the sector,” said Franz-Josef Mengede, head of ABB’s Power Generation business.

Lux Research published a report last year which estimated the size of the water infrastructure repair (drinking and waste water) market at $17 billion a year worldwide. Cities lose large amounts of water through leaks and inefficiencies. Water companies call this  “non-revenue water”, since they treat the water but cannot charge for it since it does not reach customers.

“A city such as London loses 30 percent of its water; over 600 million cubic meters, ” said  TaKaDu’s VP of Marketing Guy Horowitz. “A cubic meter can cost anywhere from a $0.20 to a few dollars, so we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, per day. Indirect losses such as road and property damage, traffic interruptions, paying detection crews and repair crews, and in many cases regulatory fines, amount to hundreds of millions per year in large cities. ” The situation is much worse in the developing world where water that could supply 200 million people is lost every year.

TaKaDu offers water infrastructure monitoring as a service. The company’s software links to existing sensors in the water network like flow meters, quality sensors and pressure meters. Geographical information system (GIS) data, maintenance records, access control records and seasonal fluctuation data is also used. All this data is crunched to detect problems like leaks,  inefficiencies and faults in the water network.  Thames Water, which runs London’s water system, detects leaks up to 9 days earlier with TaKaDu than with its previous system.

TaKaDu uses various data mining techniques to identify problems. One example algorithm is cross-site correlation that matches up neighborhoods which display common water consumption behavior over time.  ”Assume your neighborhood’s consumption goes up by 10 percent while the ‘similar’ neighborhood does not, ” explains Horowitz. “That may indicate a problem, while if both increase it may indicate a warm day, or some other benign explanation.”

In general, the water management business makes minimal usage of IT and is grappling with outdated and decaying infrastructure. Leaks were often only detected manually or by comparing current system behavior to historical behavior, such as last year’s pipe pressure compared to this year. Having an operator inspect a pipe manually inch by inch is still a common practice to track down a local leak, as is replacing an entire pipe. Even small water companies have hundreds of miles of piping. A town of 50,000 typically has more than 200 miles of wastewater pipe alone.

TaKaDu was founded in 2009, has 25 employees and  is based in Yahud, Israel. The new $6 million investment was led by ABB Technology Ventures, ABB’s venture capital arm and also included existing TaKaDu investors Emerald Technology Ventures, Gemini Israel Funds and Giza Venture Capital. TaKaDu raised $3.5 million in 2009.

charity:water has already brought clean drinking water to 2 million people around the world and is supported by some of technology’s biggest names including Sean Parker (Napster), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Marissa Mayer (Google), Dennis Crowley (Foursquare) and Michael Birch (founder of social network Bebo). So how did charity:water conquer the tech world?

Harrison spent 10 years working in the nightclub industry in New York. “I got paid to fill up nightclubs with beautiful people and sell them very expensive drinks,” he recalls. “After 10 years of that, on a trip to Uruguay, I took a look at my life and realized that I would never be happy chasing the things I was chasing. There would never be enough girls. There would never be enough money. There would never be enough status. I started reading the New Testament and theology, and I’m in Uruguay hungover, so this was an interesting push-pull. It was a debauched vacation where we were drinking Doms (magnums of Dom Perignon) every day. So I came back and I couldn’t throw these parties with any joy anymore. I made a deal with God that I would make my life 100 percent the opposite.”

Never one for half measures, Harrison volunteered as a photo journalist with Mercy Ships (the only NGO that would accept him), which operates a fleet of hospital ships in developing nations. “I thought I would be able to use those photos to bridge the gap between this new life and the 10,000 people on my nightlife list, ” he explains. Aged 30 and back in New York, he started charity:water to bring clean water to some of the billion people in the world who lack access to this basic necessity.

charity:water now has 4,282 water projects all over the world from Bangladesh to Bolivia. A network of 25 experienced partners in 19 countries actually implement the projects. “Many of them stink at fundraising and telling their story, so that’s where we come in,” comments Harrison. Access to clean water doesn’t just reduce levels of disease but also frees up large tracts of women’s time (women and children usually collect water) and improves the economic situation of the poorest households.

Projects use a variety of technologies, since there is no single solution that suits every situation. Some projects protect existing natural springs. Others filter water using biosand, harvest rainwater or rehabilitate existing wells. Donors can see photographs and GPS coordinates for each project on Google Maps.

Harrison didn’t just want to provide clean water; he wanted to reinvent charity. “When I talked to people about giving, there were so many excuses,” says Harrison.”They didn’t know where their money would go, and they didn’t know the impact it would make. Those were two solvable problems. The first problem was solved through the 100 percent model (100 percent of donations from the general public go directly to water projects). I found a group of people who would fund staff and operations. There is now a group of 81 such investors.” Other  ”investors” are Michael Birch, Sean Parker, Matt Mullenweg (the founder of WordPress) and Jason Fried of 37signals.

The Dollars to Projects feature tracks every dollar though the system. Every three months, charity:water sends a batch of money out. It is tracked for the next 12 months while the implementation partners are digging and drilling. The partners create a report, charity:water audits that data and presents it back to the donor. “Even if you only have $4, you can see where those $4 ended up,” says Harrison.

He also wanted to build a brand. ”To solve a problem this big, we needed to create an epic brand, an aspirational and transparent brand.” says Harrison. “So many charities seem to market guilt. We tell a story of opportunity. We needed to present the problems, the solutions and the joy that results when those solutions are implemented, in beautiful ways.”

Technology entrepreneurs got involved early on. “I wanted to spread my birthday idea (giving up your birthday presents and asking friends and family to donate instead) through social media so I googled the top five social networks, one of which was Bebo.

“I wrote Zuckerberg. I scraped Michael Birch’s (founder of Bebo) address and shot him an email in the dark. I got an email back saying ‘Wow that’s a really cool idea’ but the timing was bad and he couldn’t really help at the moment. Some months later, he was passing through New York and we met. A couple of days after the meeting, he wrote me an email saying ‘I’ve wired $1 million to your account’”.

Others followed. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey gave up his 33rd and 34th birthdays for the charity. Investor Chris Sacca and Spotify’s Shakil Khan visited Ethiopia to see charity:water’s projects there. ”In many ways we are a startup and a tech company, except that I have no equity and there is no exit.” Harrison claims. “Our shareholders are 65-year old women in Africa who walk three hours to get clean water. We are raising 73 percent of our money online. We are up 80 percent in a sector (charitable contributions) which has been falling. The bigger we get, the more people we can help.”

The charity’s latest initiative is WaterForward, a brainchild of Michael Birch, which is an online book filled with the faces of people helping to end the water crisis. Each slot in the book costs $10, and 100 percent of that money goes to charity:water. You can’t put yourself in the book. Someone else who is already in the book has to sponsor you with a $10 donation. Once you’re in, it’s up to you to pay it forward. WaterForward has raised $175,000 so far.

One consistent problem with water projects in the developing world has been maintenance. Wells are built, then fall into disrepair after the NGO that builds them moves on and the locals don’t know how to fix them. Harrison is now looking at innovating in this area. ”We are piloting a mobile mechanics project in Ethiopia where locals visit all the local projects and bring back data. We have funded women entrepreneurs in India [who] go and rehabilitate water projects. We are working on giving cell phones to women in these villages and incentivizing them by topping up their cell phone minutes to text us data on the water project, as simple as ‘Water is flowing’ or ‘Water is not flowing’.”

I ask Harrison about his plans for the future. He says “We’d like to help 15 million people get clean water by 2015.” Not many have that in their business plan.

“Most of the energy in your hot water system is lost. It’s never used.” says Christy. A typical shower uses at least 3 litres of drinking water, and 22-48 percent of the energy used to heat a shower is lost in storing warm water which then goes cold in tanks and pipes within a household.

The recycling shower captures water you have already used in a reservoir, which is likely to be built into the base of the shower. The water is then filtered in a component called a hydrocyclone, which uses similar technology to a Dyson vacuum cleaner, and spins the water around to separate out any heavier particles or materials. The 70 percent of the water that survives this filtering mechanism is pasteurized to kill any bacteria and redirected back into the shower head. The whole real-time, recycling process takes a mere 25 seconds and reduces the amount of water used in an average shower by 70 percent. Since you are recirculating water which is already warm, energy costs are further reduced over heating cold mains water.

The inventor of the shower technology, Peter Brewir, is a director of Water Recycling Shower. He also invented concrete canvas, a fabric that, when sprayed with water, turns into concrete with 24 hours. Concrete canvas allows solid structures to be built quickly in disaster zones.

According to Christy, showering is the second largest energy cost in most households. In markets like Australia, where the company is based, water shortages are also a problem. “When I moved to Australia at the end of 2007, there was a really bad drought.” Christy explained. “In Brisbane the water was down to 16 percent in a city of 2.1 million people. You were supposed to limit your showers to four minutes. You see what people do when there is no petrol. You can imagine what they are going to do when there is no water.” Based on the current cost of water and energy in Australia, the recycling shower would save around $185 per person per year. However, the Queensland Water Commission estimates that water heating costs in that area of Australia will double by 2016.

Christy estimates that the shower is currently around 18 months away from market. The company will sell directly to consumers. The whole package will consist of a replacement for the current shower’s thermostat and showerhead, a reservoir to collect used water and a briefcase-sized unit containing the filtering system.

The first target market for the recycling shower is the United Kingdom, where 50 percent of the population already uses an electric shower. One possible disadvantage of the shower in other markets is that it requires a higher power supply to be available in the bathroom (40 Amps as opposed to the usual mains power of 15-20 Amps) because the filtering system uses a lot of energy during a shower. Bathrooms with electric showers will already have such a connection. The initial cost will be around $2,365 per shower. Christy says that an average household should save enough within the first 3 years to cover the initial investment.

The recycling shower has one competitor in a company called Quench Showers, also based in Australia. Quench’s shower system divides a shower into two phases: soaping and rinsing. 100 percent of water used in the rinsing phase is reused after the water is filtered, pressurised and heated.  There does seem to be a rather inconvenient wait between the soaping and rinsing phase.

A future Water Recycling Shower feature that is bound to be popular with parents of teenagers everywhere, is the shower remote control. No more endless showers for Madam, unless she likes them cold.

Water Recycling Shower was founded in 2009, has one employee (the Green Challenge prize will mainly be used to hire engineers), is based in Brisbane Australia and is privately funded.

Lux Research recently published a report on the state of water infrastructure worldwide, how data could be the future of water, and which startups to watch.

The report estimates the size of the water infrastructure repair (drinking and waste water) market at $17 billion a year worldwide. Cities in the developed world lose on average 10 to 30 percent of their drinking water though leaks. The situation is even worse across much of the developing world, where, in total, water that could supply 200 million people is lost. On the wastewater side (sewers and associated piping), leaks can poison drinking water and cause environmental damage.

Water companies call this “non-revenue water”, since they treat the water but cannot charge for it since it does not reach the user. Losing water means losing money. In a world impacted by climate change, there may also be less water to begin with. Leaks also impact customers’ bills. Atlanta undertook a $4 billion project to repair its drinking and wastewater networks, resulting in the highest water-service bills in the U.S. Even small water companies have hundreds of kilometers of pipes. A town of 50,000 typically has more than 200 miles of wastewater pipe alone.

So how are leaks currently located? It’s a continuous process of monitoring and comparing current system behavior to historical behavior, such as last year’s pipe pressure compared to this year. Having an operator inspect a pipe manually inch by inch is common practice to track down a local leak, as is replacing an entire pipe. Robots can be used in repairs of pipes too small for humans as an alternative to excavating and replacing the whole pipe.

What water companies need to locate and repair leaks more efficiently is a combination of more monitoring data and software to translate it into actions. Monitoring can range from GPS mapping of water lines, real-time water flow monitoring and automated recording pipe conditions using robots. But the most prominent new monitoring technique is smart water meters. Like smart electricity meters, smart meters can send data to water companies several times a day, rather than a few times a year, and reveal inconsistencies in flow that may be due to leaking pipes or stolen water. The problem with meters is that they produce huge amounts of new data that must be analyzed and acted upon. Like electricity companies, water companies need to harness this flow of data using analysis software that can identify and predict problem areas.

One startup the report mentions in this context is TaKaDu which offers water monitoring as a service. The company’s software links to existing sensors in the water network like flow meters. Based on this information, it alerts operators to what problems are arising and where. Although only in existence for two years, TaKaDu already counts Thames Water (which runs London’s water system) as a client.

Redzone Robotics uses autonomous robots, which can avoid obstacles, to inspect pipes. The robots carry a battery of instruments including a technology called Lidar (light detection and ranging), which creates a 3D profile of a pipe’s interior. An operator can deploy multiple robots into pipelines and retrieve them at the next access point, replacing the bored man in a truck scanning CCTV.

Startups aren’t the only companies to have spotted the potential in the water market. Mobile carrier Orange recently launched a new mobile operator specifically for carrying smart water metering data. And consumer electronics giant LG has created a new business division focusing on waste water treatment.

So what’s next? Google Thirst? Watch this space.

Water metering measures water usage just as smart metering measures electricity usage. Nearly two-thirds of OECD countries meter more than 90 percent of households and these measurements can be used to bill for water services. Mobile networks can be used to communicate the meter data to municipal authorities.

While smart electricity metering may have grabbed all the headlines, water metering is becoming an increasingly hot topic. Less than 1 percent of the earth’s water is suitable for drinking. As the world’s population grows and becomes more urban, more than 3 billion people may suffer from water shortages by the year 2025.

It may seem surprising that Orange is launching an entirely new mobile carrier just for water metering. However, mobile carriers have been targeting  M2M (machine to machine) or “Internet of things” applications for some time. M2M applications gather data from huge numbers of sensors and devices and applications include automotive (see TomTom’s HD traffic), smartgrid, healthcare and environmental usages.

Veolia Water provides drinking water and wastewater treatment for municipal authorities and industry. It operates in 67 countries and provides water services to 100 million people.

Consumer electronics company LG launched its first water treatment solution last year. GE and Siemens have also been investing  heavily in water technology in recent years.

The characteristics of M2M traffic on a Telecommunications network are different to human-to-human or human-to-machine communications like voice and data. Sensors often send small amounts of data periodically, but potentially all at the same time, like meter readings. Some of the systems based on M2M data like smartgrid may be critical and even life-threatening, so high quality of service is essential. Therefore, networks need to optimized specifically for M2M applications.

Swedish mobile carrier Telenor previously launched a global mobile carrier specializing in M2M applications called Telenor Connexion.

Here are the top stories we’re following today on the GreenBeat:

NRG Solar and SunPower will team to build a $450 million solar ranch in California — NRG Solar will finance the 250-megawatt project, and SunPower will maintain it, according to the Associated Press.

Nuclear waste startup Kurion has emerged from stealth — The company turns nuclear waste into glass through a process it says is cheaper, faster and more efficient than its competitors, Earth2Tech writes.

Water-to-electricity startup BlackLight Power plans a demonstration project for next year – The company has been dinged in the past for a far-fetched-sounding technology, but says it can produce electricity for $25 per kilowatt-hour by converting hydrogen into a low-energy form of itself, a process that it says releases large amounts of energy.

GE has launched a home energy management branch – CNET writes that the unit will combine smart appliances with Nucleus, a web-based home energy management system (pictured).

Energy efficiency startup Opower raised $50 million — The round was co-led by Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins. The software and customer engagement company has been steadily rising with a cadre of utility customers and several quarters of break-even cashflow — and the venture capital backing seems to showcase some trends in cleantech investing at the moment, namely, less capital-intensive and energy efficiency-related bets.

China could be the next country to make a bet on natural gas vehicles — WSJ said the country could be a better place to launch natural gas cars, given the fledgling infrastructure, air pollution problems and coal-powered plants (making electric vehicles perhaps less desirable).

LG admitted at that time to having no previous experience with water treatment technology, but it intends to invest $400 million in this new business in the next decade and generate $7 billion in revenue by 2020. The company said this marked the start of a major change in direction and is part of LG’s search for a new growth engine.

Water filtration removes solids from liquids and is normally the last step in the water-purification process. Various types of permeable membrane can be used to remove both salts and dissolved organic matter. LG has developed an advanced membrane filtration system, in particular reducing the size and increasing the efficiency of the membrane. The membrane in the G-MBR process requires 34 percent less space than conventional MBRs, making it more efficient and easier to install.

According to LG, the membrane is highly resistant to contamination and fouling, ensuring a longer lifespan while still delivering savings in maintenance costs. G-MBR’s phosphorus-removal system is almost twice as effective as similarly-sized systems. Removing phosphorus from treated water is an important part of any water treatment solution as phosphorus has been shown to contribute to the eutrophication, or heightened biological activity, in lakes, ponds and other bodies of water

LG intends to begin its foray into the water business by targeting industrial water treatment, later expanding into sewage and drinking water treatment. The company eventually plans to enter the business of water treatment engineering and procurement as well as operation and maintenance across the municipal sector. Its main competitors are  GE, which has been investing heavily in water technology in recent years, and Siemens.

On Nov 30, LG announced a restructuring of the company. Separate healthcare and water business teams will be created to drive those businesses forward. The Home Appliance (HA) unit will establish a compressor and motor business unit. There will also be an Air Conditioning and Energy Solution (AE) Company which will take on future growth opportunities such as solar and LED lighting. LG is clearly indicating that its existing consumer electronics business will not be its only, or even main,  growth engine for the future. It will be interesting to see whether the other electronics giants follow suit.

Solar and biofuels could be price competitive with traditional power sources within a decade, the Boston Consulting Group said, but wind power and electric cars will struggle with mass adoption, Reuters reports.

GM will start taking reservations today for its European electric hybrid, the Opel Ampera (pictured) — which is the European version of the Chevy Volt. The car is priced at about 43,000 euros, or about $59,000, but will likely cost a lot less for consumers thanks to European subsidies.

Toyota will produce an electric car to go on sale in 2012 that will have a range of 62 miles on a single charge, Reuters reports.

Car battery company A123 has landed a deal to supply lithium-ion cells to Shanghai car maker SAIC for use in an electric vehicle, Bloomberg reports. The companies have formed a joint venture called Advanced Traction Battery Systems and will produce an electric car in 2012 with a range of about 100 miles.

Water infrastructure monitoring startup TaKaDu has closed a second round of financing led by Emerald Technology Ventures. Existing investors Giza Venture Capital and Gemini Israel Funds participated in this round. The company previously raised $3.5 million in first-round financing last year, a spokesman said.

LG admitted to having no previous experience with water treatment technology but intends to invest $400 million in this new business in the next decade. It said this marks the start of a major change in direction for the company and the search for a new growth engine.

Filtration basically removes solids from liquids and is normally the last step in the water-purification process. Various types of permeable membrane can be used to remove both salts and dissolved organic matter. LG will concentrate on developing an advanced membrane filtration system, in particular reducing the size and increasing the efficiency of the membrane.

LG intends to begin by targeting industrial water treatment, later expanding into sewage and drinking water treatment. The company eventually plans to enter the business of water treatment engineering and procurement as well as operation and maintenance across the municipal sector. Its main competitors would be GE, which has been investing heavily in water technology in recent years, and Siemens.

This isn’t LG’s first foray into clean tech. In 2008, it attempted to acquire a 75% stake in Conergy’s Frankfurt solar-panel plant but ended up rescinding the offer at the height of the financial crisis. LG also hasn’t fared well in Greenpeace’s guide to greener electronics. The company fell from 6th to 12th place in the 2010 guide. So this announcement may also be an attempt to build an image of a greener company.

This announcement suggests intriguing possibilities for other manufacturers of consumer electronics. Can we next expect to see Apple selling solar panels?

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. We’ll cover the topic at DiscoveryBeat 2010. Startups and big companies alike should consider entering our Needle in the Haystack discovery business idea competition. Early bird discounts are available until September 22. Sponsors can contact us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, click on this link.

Spotting this swelling interest, Pike Research released a report predicting that there will be 31.8 million smart meters worldwide by 2016, up from the 5.2 million meters already in place in 2009. It also said that 31 percent of all new water meters delivered will be digital, allowing for two-way communication between meters, utilities and even consumers.

Like businesses and utilities already jumping into the smart water movement, Pike sees water shortages as a prime motivator for accelerated innovation. According to its research, about 50 percent of the world’s population will be impacted by water shortages by 2030, and in the U.S. alone, 36 states will experience drought by 2013.

With water supplies drying up, utilities are moving fast to encourage conservation and eliminate systemic problems. The more water that gets to their customers, the more money they make. All of a sudden, leaks and customary losses are becoming less and less acceptable.

IBM and other companies are developing elaborate sensor systems to help remedy these problems. Last November, the computing giant launched smart water tools with three utilities. These sensor networks detect waste and contamination along distributions systems. If they can justify their cost with savings, they will no doubt catch on elsewhere.

That said, there are major challenges standing between smart water meters and wide adoption. Municipal water boards and utilities are notoriously slow moving, unlikely to adopt new technologies unless they are monetarily advantageous or necessary to compete. Smart water monitoring will require a significant investment, so the transition may not be compelling for several more years.

Now a young Israeli company called TaKaDu has developed an innovative solution to this multibillion dollar problem.

Water loss costs the U.S. $2.6 billion every year, and the world $14 billion. When you add in insurance premiums for coverage against the damage that result from leaks and pipe bursts, these costs increase substantially.

“That water has been moved, it has been treated, [and] as it leaks, it might be causing property damage,” said Peter Williams, chief technology officer for the Big Green Innovations group at IBM. “The economic value of [preventing leaks] is compelling.”

As water networks have aged, the challenge has grown. TaKaDu’s answer to this problem is to use the data that water utilities already collect. It claims to have developed a complex and proprietary mathematical algorithm that can be used to predict and detect leaks, bursts, inefficiencies and equipment failures — enabling utilities to quickly prevent and respond to breaks and minimize water loss and repair costs. Infrastructure monitoring therefore enables utilities to make the most of their service and pipe replacement budgets. Here’s what its web-based dashboard looks like:

“Utilities already have meters all over their networks, transmitting data all the time,” said Amir Peleg, TakaDu’s founder and CEO. “They measure water flow, pressure and quality. I asked several utilities what they do with the data and they said almost nothing. They just log the data. They use it for operational needs, not for early detection.”

TaKaDu, however, uses this information, combined with data gleaned from other sources, to identify local and regional consumption baselines, as well as daily and weekly use patterns. Common data sources include utilities’ supervisory systems, which keep tabs on water turbidity, acidity and temperature, as well as public weather services.

“TaKaDu is the first company to take all that data and analyze it and provide information to the utility,” said Heather Landis, an analyst at cleantech-focused Lux Research. “They are operating in their own space.”

Last summer, TaKaDu raised $3.5 million from Israeli venture capital firms Gemini Israel Funds and Giza Venture Capital. Peleg then assembled a team of researchers with advanced degrees in computer science and mathematics — many of whom, like Peleg, are garduates of Talpiot, the Israeli military’s elite science and technology training program. Together, they spent a year formulating and tweaking the algorithms that are now the basis for TaKaDu’s water monitoring platform.

These algorithms borrow from network theory and machine learning to identify correlations between the many variables involved in water distribution. To illustrate, Peleg offered a simple example based on readings from meters in two different neighborhoods served by the same utility.

“Imagine there is always a 20 percent difference between meter readings,” Peleg said. “Why? Because one is in a bigger neighborhood. If the gap grows, chances are one has a leak, or it is a problem of faulty meters. If you correlate among many meters, it is quite a powerful mechanism to learn what normal behavior looks like and where you have an anomaly.”

TaKaDu is operating on a software-as-a-service model. Water utilities can provide their network data to the startup via any web browser. The company’s servers then analyze the data in real time to identify events and abnormalities. But rather than selling the software directly to the utilities, which are notoriously risk-averse, Peleg and his crew are partnering with companies like IBM and Schneider Electric, which already sell products to tens of thousands of water utilities around the world. TaKaDu’s blog just posted an interview with Pascal Bonnefoi, the water segment director for Schneider.

“We like [TaKaDu’s] technology and we like their business model,” said IBM’s Williams. “It has very low barriers to entry. It doesn’t require the insertion of equipment in the ground, which is always expensive. We think of it as an excellent complement to what we sell.”

Already, the startup has several paying utility customers in the U.K., the Netherlands, Australia and Israel. Each of these customers pays a monthly fee of $10,000 to $150,000, depending on the scale of their water networks. Right now, TaKaDu counts Thames Water, the United Kingdom’s largest water utility, and Hagihon, Jerusalem’s water utility, among its clients. Both started paying for the service last quarter.

The company is also conducting ongoing trials across Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the United States. At the Israel Cleantech Summit hosted by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce, TaKaDu generated considerable buzz. Peleg, who sold his previous company — online behavioral targeting and advertising firm YaData — to Microsoft, has since been hailed for his creative thinking.

“It is exciting to see entrepreneurs who have been successful with technology in a different sector apply the ideas behind it to water,” said Rachel Sheinbein, a water expert at CMEA Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm. “I like the entrepreneur. I also like that TaKaDu can create potential from [existing] data. We will continue to see [the company] grow.”

Such high praise for a new water play is rare in the venture capital community, which has been slow to invest in water entrepreneurship. Less than 3 percent of venture investments in 2009 went into water, according to the Cleantech Group. But TaKaDu seems to have won over some of the skeptics.

“TaKaDu can very quickly prove ‘Is there a return on investment?’ and shorten the sales cycle,” said Sagi Rubin, a cleantech specialist at private equity firm Virgin Green Fund. “There is scalability in the model and room to expand in terms of coming in with one offering for the municipality, and once in, add[ing] another and another and another. That’s a foundation for a very large business.”

Yoni Cohen is a JD-MBA student at Yale Law School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Israel, he is a former college basketball writer for Fox Sports. Follow Yoni on Twitter at @cohen_yoni.