Green Wombat

Greenware: Solar Boom Spawns Software Market

Solar energy is largely a hardware business - the stuff of solar cells, photovoltaic panels, inverters, and power-plant sized arrays. But the solar boom is also spawning a solar software market as rooftop systems become an industrial-scale supplier of electricity to corporations ranging from Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) to Estee Lauder and Wal-Mart (WMT).  Call it greenware - software that lets companies that install, own or operate huge rooftop solar arrays to go online and monitor their perfomance.  Green Wombat recently chatted with Chris Beekhuis, founder of Silicon Valley startup Fat Spaniel Technologies, about the growing demand for greenware and how it can boost the efficiency of solar systems and, in the Web 2.0 era, serve as interactive tool for homeowners and consumers. The San Jose company's software monitors solar energy systems at more than 500 locations around the world. That allows the operators of solar arrays installed everywhere from the Loma Linda, California, City Hall to a Seventh Day Adventist church to a home in Ranch Mirage to go to Fat Spaniel's site and see real-time data on how much solar power is being generated and consumed.

"It raises awareness of energy usage," says Beekhuis. "We see customers putting into context their green energy versus what they’ve been getting from the grid. Homeowners will go around and find out what’s using so much energy at particular times." In other words, if you notice your solar panels produce maximum electricity during certain hours of the day, you might start to run energy-intensive appliances during those times.

Such data is even more crucial for companies. It all comes down to power and money. Commercial rooftop arrays are multi million-dollar investments that are increasingly financed and operated by third parties - a SunEdison or MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) - that must keep tabs on systems scattered across the country. These solar companies own the systems and sell the electricity they produce back to the rooftop host at a fixed rate, meaning that optimizing a solar array's performance is crucial. And where marketable renewable energy credits are associated with a solar installation, such data can prove valuable in proving to regulators the project's green energy production. "They want to be able to forecast and guarantee performance," Beekhuis says of his clients. "But it is very difficult to monitor those remote sites. We have an installer in Southern California who is approaching 100 installations. They can see a problem online and then go out and fix it. They leave a door hanger that says, "I’ve improved performance of your array.' "  For instance, online monitoring lets the installer notice if a growing tree is shading a panel, interfering with its performance.

Here's how it works: Fat Spaniel sells a package that includes a software license, hardware and a monitoring subscription service. A device at the solar installation site keeps tabs on the system's performance, transmitting the data over the Internet via a wireless modem.

Beekhuis sees Fat Spaniel expanding into the energy efficiency market as well.  For instance, just this week Macy's announced a deal wth SunPower (SPWR) to install solar arrays at 26 of its California stores in conjunction with energy efficiency upgrades to lighting and heating and cooling systems. "On the commercial side there’s a great value in green marketing," he says. "We’ve talked to some very large firms lately looking to reduce overall carbon footprints. This is a tangible way to monitor their efforts."
.

Big Solar: Solar Systems

photos: green wombat
When reporting the Big Solar story for the June issue of Business 2.0, I had the opportunity to visit solar power company Solar Systems in Melbourne, Australia, as well as one of its power plants in the Australian Outback. Founder John Lasich started the company in 1990 after spending years working on solar technology in his backyard. Lasich, 52, began tinkering with solar cells as a university student in 1975. "I had to do a project for physics," he recalls. "There was a list of really boring things to do. I happened to have read a bit about solar cells and I asked my supervisor if I could do it on that and it just so happened that he had an interest in that as well. I couldn’t wait to get these cells. I put them out in the sun and got a meter and tested them and I got milliwatts. I thought, 'shit, as elegant as this is, this is not going to do anything.' " So Lasich got an art student to craft a dish on his pottery wheel. "I put in the cell and bingo, it was like a hundred times the power. And I thought I’m making something here. And 10 seconds later the cell melted and fell to pieces because I cooked it. And I guess ever since then I’ve been working on the business of making cells survive and work extremely well in the environment."

Lasich's rudimentary dish had concentrated the sun's rays on the solar cell, boosting its output. After university, he joined a solar company that went broke when oil prices fell in the early 1980s. Lasich then went to work in the petrochemical industry for the next 10 years. But he continued to perfect his concentrator dish technology. He pulls out a faded Polaroid of his younger, long-haired self working on a homemade solar dish in his backyard in the 1980s. In 1990 he took the plunge and founded Solar Systems to build concentrator photovoltaic dishes. Solar Systems headquarters off a lane in a Melbourne suburb is something of a solar museum, with various generations of the company's technology sitting on shelves and scattered about Lasich's office. That solar dish that he and his wife built in their backyard more than a decade and a half ago sits outside the company's clean room and is still used to test solar receivers.

Solar Systems has built three small-scale power plants in remote Aboriginal communities in Australia's Northern Territory. The Hermannsburg plant (photos above) features eight giant dishes that focus the sun on receivers containing solar cells. Electricity is produced instantly with virtually no moving parts, other than the dishes that track the sun throughout the day. Seven of the dishes feature solar cells from SunPower. The eighth dish, however, sports new high-efficiency multijunction cells developed by Boeing's Spectrolab subsidiary and Solar Systems.  Inside the control  room, a flat-screen monitor shows a more than 50 percent improvement in efficiency for that dish.

Back in Melbourne, Lasich holds up a cube of midnight-blue glass. It's a Spectrolab solar module that is the heart of Solar Systems's next big project: a 154-megawatt heliostat concentrator solar power station to be built in southeast Australia. Last year the company won $95 million in Australian government funding toward the plant. Instead of using expensive and technologically complex solar dishes, Solar Systems will deploy fields of relatively cheap sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats that will focus the sun on towers that hold receivers containing the world's most efficient solar cells. And when even more efficient cells are developed, Solar Systems can just swap out the old ones. The company plans to produce 20,000 heliostats on a robotic assembly line. "They’ll be rolled out over about a three-year period," Lasich says. "So we have a proving up period of about three and a half years to demonstrate this format and then the process is to just repeat that."

Lasich expects the plant to produce electricity for about 10 cents a kilowatt hour, which would make it nearly competitive with coal, especially if greenhouse gas emission limits are imposed. "It’s not a number we picked because it sounds good. We did a thousand-line costing of the thing," he says. "The beautiful thing about a concentrator system is that the module puts out 1,500 times more power than a normal solar panel," he says. "What it means is the rest of the system - 95 percent of it is glass, steel and concrete, really common stuff. So the manufacturing and building techniques are stock standard."

"We’re in this for the triple bottom line, if you like," he adds. "We’re trying to make money for our shareholders and we’re trying to be socially responsible while we do it, and of course we’re trying to improve the environment while we’re at it."

The Top 10 Energy-Efficient States

photo: Ian David Blüm
California, Connecticut and Vermont are the most energy-efficient states in the U.S., according to a new report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The Washington, D.C.-based non-profit analyzed federal energy data and surveyed state policies to rank states based on, among other things, their spending on energy efficiency programs, appliance and equipment energy efficiency standards, building codes, and tax incentives for energy efficiency. The 74-page report was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The top 10 most energy efficient states in 2006:

• California, Connecticut and Vermont (tie)
• Massachusetts
• Oregon
• Washington
• New York
• New Jersey
• Rhode Island, Minnesota (tie)

The 10 least energy efficient states:

• North Dakota
• Wyoming
• Mississippi
• South Dakota
• Alabama
• Missouri
• Arkansas
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Alaska

"The top 10 states are generally characterized by having limited in-state supplies of conventional fossil energy resources," the report's authors wrote. "They have long understood that they cannot rely on conventional resources for security of supply or other reasons. By contrast, the lower-scoring states have been typically endowed with abundant amounts of traditional energy resources that have been historically inexpensive."

The green states' investments in energy efficiency have paid off, according to the report, in job creation, lower air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, less expensive energy bills and a more sustainable growth in energy demand.

Macy's Solar Shopping Spree

photo: sudweeks
Macy's will install rooftop solar arrays at 26 of its California stores that will produce 8-megawatts of green electricity. Coupled with an energy-efficiency overhaul, the retailer expects to cut its utility bill at the stores by an estimated 40 percent. Solar cell maker SunPower's (SPWR) PowerLight subsidiary will install the solar energy systems. Macy's will buy the arrays for 11 of the stores. For the other 15 stores, Macy's will purchase the electricity produced by the solar panels from a third-party financier who will retain ownership of the systems. Macy's is just the latest big retailer to go solar. Last month, Wal-Mart (WMT) said it will install solar arrays at 22 stores using third-party financing in deals with SunEdison, BP (BP) and SunPower.

But Macy's move is notable on a couple of counts. First, it's integrating solar power with an energy efficiency upgrade, installing electricity-conserving lighting, and heating and cooling along with energy management systems. The one-two punch is expected to eliminate 88,450 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the course of the systems' lifetimes. "By combining energy efficiency with solar power, Macy’s is taking the extra step to cut our peak load demand," said Macy's vice chairman Tom Cole in a statement on Tuesday.

Of course, all this is great PR. But there's also some serious green at stake. Macy's will get all the state and federal tax breaks for the solar systems it owns as well as any potentially marketable renewable energy credits associated with the projects. The financier of the other solar arrays will retain the tax benefits and share any renewable energy credits with  Macy's. SunPower and Macy's will jointly manage the energy efficiency upgrades. SunPower spokeswoman Ingrid Ekstrom told Green Wombat that SunPower is still negotiating the third-party financing. But the Wombat can't help noting that San Francisco solar banker MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) just last week announced a new division that will finance and manage energy efficiency projects much the way it finances solar arrays for corporate clients.

The other point worth considering is the impact on the power grid and big utilities as more and more big box stores and warehouse operators pursue a solar solution. By cutting peak electricity demand, these massive solar arrays take the load off the grid and lessen the need for additional coal or natural-gas fired power plants. That also means that utilities sell less electricity. In a state like California, where investor-owned utilities' profits are not tied to how much power they provide, that's not a problem. In fact, PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) will benefit as companies like Macy's will make it easier for them to meet their state-mandated renewable energy targets if they don't need to crank up so many fossil-fueled power stations. For utilities that make their money pushing as many electrons as possible, the rise of the distributed power grid is more problematic. But with a national greenhouse gas emissions cap all but inevitable, even the coal belt will benefit from the spread of the sun belt.

Big Solar: BrightSource Energy

illustration: brightsource energy
Green Wombat's story on the land rush to build utility-scale solar power plants appears in the June issue of Business 2.0 (online here), and this week I'm featuring bonus material on the blog. Today, the focus is on BrightSource Energy. The Oakland, California, startup is the latest incarnation of Luz International, an Israeli company that built nine solar trough power plants in California's Mojave Desert in the 1980s that continue to produce some 354 megawatts of electricity. Luz went bankrupt after tax breaks for solar power evaporated and its American-Israeli founder, Arnold Goldman, went on to work as a consultant and software executive. In 2004, as global warming worries began to drive demand for renewable energy, he reassembled much of his old team - including some of their now-grown children - and hired Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Woolard, a energy and software veteran, as CEO. BrightSource has developed a solar technology that it calls a distributed power tower. Fields of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats focus the sun's rays on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a tower. The intense heat creates steam which drives a turbine to generate electricity. Power plants will be built in 100-megawatt clusters, with a field of heliostats facing a tower. A future hybrid version of the technology will feature a turbine that can also be fired by natural gas so the plant's operating hours can be extended and it can continue to generate electricity on cloudy days. BrightSource currently is negotiating a contract with California utility PG&E (PCG) to supply 500 megawatts of solar electricity beginning in 2010.

BrightSource itself is something of a hybrid itself - it's a startup funded by venture capital - VantagePoint Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson -  but carries the tech DNA of one of the world's pioneering solar power companies. In conversations with Goldman and Woolard, it's clear BrightSource aims to compete against fossil fuel-generated power by wringing greater efficiencies from solar power and supplementing sun with gas - natural or bio - to create on-demand power plants. "When I was at VantagePoint, I looked at everybody out there," Woolard tells Green Wombat at BrightSource's sparsely-furnished offices in a downtown Oakland office tower. "And it’s a game where if you’re not careful you might  pick up 2 percent efficiency over here and you don’t realize you might lose 3 percent on the back end. And very few groups, if any, really understood that full optimization from the photon to the electron as did Luz."  Woolard says Goldman's ability to deliver - Luz built nine power plants in between 1982 and 1991 - gives BrightSource a leg up. "In Israel, they have just this phenomenal R&D and engineering group that’s just incredible," he says. Within five months of securing funding last October, BrightSource had its first heliostat test field up in Jerusalem. A prototype power plant is set to begin operating in early 2008 in southern Israel.

Goldman says sophisticated software design and modeling tools have allowed BrightSource to test its technology virtually, speeding up the engineering process. "Once we got financed we’ve been able to move incredibly fast into structuring, implementation, to hardware, to  test systems," he tells Green Wombat. Showing potential investors hard data that the distributed power technology will work as advertised and deliver lower-cost solar power is crucial as BrightSource finds itself competing against the proven solar trough technology that it pioneered in the '80s. (A solar trough power plant uses parabolic mirrors to heat tubes of synthetic oil, which create steam that generates a electricity. Goldman abandoned the technology because he believes it had reached the limits of its efficiency.)

The goal is to drive down the cost of solar-generated electricity so its competitive with natural gas-fired power plants. "We think achieving that is as fast as we can and at those levels is critical," he says. "We think if we’re in that range, then we’re basically competing in the southwest with combined cycle plants. They’ve shown themselves to have market opportunities in the tens of thousands of megawatts."  BrightSource plans to build solar power plants and sell them to operators in California and the Southwest. The company has not bid so far on projects for California's two other big utilities, Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). But BrightSource is pursuing joint ventures in Spain and has formed a subsidiary, Luz II, to develop and license its technology.

Dell Aims to be the Greenest Tech Company

Dell today announced an environmental strategy designed to make the computer maker the "greenest tech company on the planet." The most-far reaching aspect of its Zero Carbon Initiative is a requirement that its suppliers publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. "Suppliers risk having their overall scores reduced during Dell quarterly business reviews for not identifying and publicly reporting GHG emissions," the company stated.  "A supplier’s volume of Dell business can be affected by the scores earned on reviews. Dell will work with suppliers on emissions reduction strategies once data is collected."  The idea is that such disclosures will encourage manufacturers of computer components - many of which are in China - to compete to reduce their contribution toward global warming.  Coming on the heels of Steve Jobs's disclosure last month of toxic chemicals present in Apple (AAPL) computers and plans to reduce or eliminate them, Dell's (DELL) move ratchets up the pressure on the computer industry to go green. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) are also undertaking various green computing initiatives. In addition, Dell proposed that companies be rated on their "carbon intensity," which measures greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of annual revenue. The Texas computer maker promised to reduce its carbon intensity 15 percent by 2012.

Past Dell programs - like it's Plant a Tree for Me carbon offset program - have been derided as being more about greening the company's image than about actually reducing its environmental impact. But today's initiatives indicate Dell is making efforts to directly cut its greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, Dell said a pilot power-management program for more than 50,000 of its corporate computers saved $1.8 million in electricity costs annually and eliminated the equivalent of 8,500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Adding a Web 2.0 twist to its enviro campaign, Dell is soliciting its customers' ideas on how to green up the company's operations at its IdeaStorm site.
 

Big Solar: Stirling Energy Systems

photos: green wombat
The June issue of Business 2.0 is on the newsstands and features Green Wombat's story on the coming boom in utility-scale solar power plants. The story is now online. I traveled around the American southwest, Portugal and Australia to report on the solar land rush unleashed by utilties' demand for renewable energy. As usual, I accumulated way more material than there was space for in a print magazine feature story. So over the next few days, Green Wombat will be running bonus material on the solar startups and technologies I profiled for Business 2.0. Today, the focus is on Stirling Energy Systems, the Phoenix company that has secured contracts with utilties Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) to install as many as 70,000 Stirling dishes (photo above) in the Mojave Desert that could power as many as a million homes. The dish tracks the sun, its mirrors concentrating the sunlight on a hydrogen gas-filled Stirling heat engine. As the superheated gas expands it drives pistons, which generate clean, green electricity. The technology dates to the late 1970s, when Ford's aerospace division developed the Stirling dish in the wake of the oil shocks of the era. McDonnell Douglas subsequently took up the effort in the 1980s and then sold the technology to Southern California Edison, which in turn passed the dish in 1996 to a startup called Stirling Energy Systems.

In March, I flew to Phoenix to meet with Stirling CEO Bruce Osborn - who worked on the Stirling dish as a 22-year-old Ford engineer in the '70s - and executive VP Bob Liden, both veterans of the auto industry. Although the Stirling dish is one of the most efficient ways to convert sunlight into electricity, the sheer sheer scale of the California utility projects - the contracts call for Stirling to provide up to 1.75 gigawatts of solar electricity - has prompted doubts among the company's rivals about its ability to manufacture so many dishes and engines and keep them operating. "The rocket science part of it has been completed," Osborn told Green Wombat at Stirling's headquarters, tucked away in an office park north of downtown Phoenix. "What we’re doing now is taking the units that work well and perform well and making the changes so they’re amenable to high-volume manufacturing."

Liden argues that scaling up from the six dishes the company currently operates in New Mexico to tens of thousands of dishes isn't as daunting as it seems. "If you’re talking to a finance guy, he might take a look at it and say this going to be absolutely impossible to make happen," says Liden. "But if you take someone who comes out of manufacturing, like at Ford or GM, they say, hey, we do this all the time. Yeah, you have to start some place, with some hand-built units. That’s what they do when they build a new car. Once you figure that out, you turn it over to the guys who know how to do the manufacturing engineering, the industrial engineering, and before long, bango, before long you can put these things out pretty darn fast."

One of Stirling's partners is investing $20 million to build a factory in Arizona that will manufacture the dishes on an assembly line, according to Osborn. "The ability to scale up is not difficult here at all," he says. "I think the key factor is to get the cost out of it. There’s capacity now for building these but it's really a cost issue."

Stirling also been focusing on developing operation and maintenance programs for the power plants. "How do you do the mirror washing most efficiently, how do you make sure the equipment is all going to be up there for a very high availability rate," says Liden. "The thing that is attractive to utilities is that if we have a 500-megawatt project it’s 20,000 dishes. If they have a few dishes that go out, that for whatever reason need to have some maintenance and repair, it’s hardly noticeable a tick on the needle."

A week later I'm driving down a deserted desert road with Osborn, deep inside Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque. There's an X-Files vibe to the place. Jets streak over the