The estimated market for energy efficiency equipment finance in the UK is enormous, with research estimating that the market over the next three years in England alone, is around £8.8bn ($13.6bn). This analysis, based on official business emissions data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, reveals the scale of the opportunity for energy cost savings.

Yet however strong the desire to upgrade to new energy efficiency technology, organisations remain cautious about investing during an uncertain economic environment, especially in light of the tight lending market.

The Energy Efficiency Financing (EEF) scheme, launched by the UK’s Carbon Trust and Siemens, provides a solution to this dilemma for UK commerce, industry and the public sector.

The EEF scheme has made £550 million ($850m) available to organisations to finance investments in green equipment over the next three years.

Monthly payments are matched to real monthly energy cost savings, which means firms effectively avoid paying extra for energy efficiency investment and can often be cash positive from the start of the payment term.

The scheme provides an alternative source of credit that is additional to, and independent from, lines of credit from a bank which are often subject to market and economic volatility.

Through the EEF scheme businesses and organisations in the UK have an easy and affordable means of acquiring a wide spectrum of energy efficiency equipment for values as little as £1,000 through to many hundreds of thousands of pounds, over a period which suits their cash flow.

Energy Efficiency Financing is available to all kinds of businesses and organisations, from sole traders and partnerships through to large corporates, local authorities and other public sector organisations.

Enigin Distributors across the UK welcome this scheme as it could help their clients to finance the installation of energy efficiency equipment from Enigin, leading to savings in energy and costs, along with providing control of their energy use.

by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica

A deal to sell a controversial central Wyoming natural gas field has fallen apart amidst allegations that drilling there has caused water pollution.

Texas-based Legacy Resources backed out of a $45 million deal to buy the field near Pavillion, Wyom., from EnCana last week, soon after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had detected cancer-causing benzene at 50 times the level safe for humans and other carcinogenic pollutants during its latest round of sampling.

The cancelled sale could signal difficulty for companies trying to turn over aging gas fields if there are environmental or health concerns related to their operations.

“Although Encana retained responsibility for any outcome resulting from the ongoing groundwater investigation undertaken by EPA, due to the continued attention surrounding the investigation, and uncertainty regarding further development, Legacy is not prepared to go forward with the transaction,” said EnCana spokesman Doug Hock, in an email to ProPublica.

Legacy Resources did not respond to a call requesting comment.

Legacy Resources announced it had agreed to buy EnCana’s Pavillion-area wells, which produce an estimated 13 million cubic feet of gas a day, on Nov. 1. At the time, the company also said it planned to drill new wells in Pavillion to tap the 45 billion cubic feet of gas it believes lies underground.

But the prospects for future development have dimmed.

Residents had long complained of widespread water contamination and alleged that fracking was to blame. EnCana had trucked in replacement drinking water to some residents. The company faced increasing controversy when the EPA announced in late 2009 that it had found hydrocarbon contaminants in residents’ drinking water wells. The agency advised residents not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes when they showered or washed dishes. ProPublica began reporting on concerns about water contamination in Pavillion in 2008.

On Nov. 9 the EPA announced more test results from samples taken in Pavillion, this time from two water monitoring wells drilled to 1,000 feet – far below most drinking water wells in the area. It found benzene, along with acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel. It also detected a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) that is commonly used by the drilling industry to fracture wells. It also can be used for cleanup at well sites.

EnCana has maintained that the pollutants found in Pavillion-area wells occur naturally, and that drilling is not to blame. “Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year – the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source,” Hock wrote to ProPublica.

Hock said that the EPA’s monitoring wells were drilled into a zone known to contain methane gas, and suggested the pollutants would have been expected to be there. He said that the 2-BE was only detected in one sample and could have leached from the plastics used to drill many drinking water and monitoring wells. In previous statements to ProPublica, he has said that the 2-BE might have come from household cleaning agents, which can contain the chemical. Hock did not reply to questions about whether EnCana had used 2-BE in fracking or any other processes in Pavillion.

The EPA’s latest findings are consistent with previous samples taken from water wells at 42 homes in the area since 2008.

The agency has so far been careful not to draw conclusions about the cause of the pollution. EPA officials had said they planned to release a detailed report analyzing possible causes of the pollution by the end of November, but now say it will be at least a few more weeks.

Plugless Power EV Charging Station

Plugless Power, an innovative EV charging station that uses hands-free, wireless inductive charging, has been installed at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Developed by Evatran, the charging stations are built into parking spaces to automatically charge the electric vehicle while it’s parked. This is the first public trial of the system. Google utilizes a variety of EVs to get around their campus and also provides them in their employee car sharing program. (more…)

© Justin Thomas for MetaEfficient Review, 2011. |
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Rheem among others make hybrid heat pump water heaters

Instead of just using electricity or propane to heat the water, the Hybrid Water Heater uses a heat pump whenever possible. Many models are available, such as the AO Smith Voltex PHPT-80 Hybrid Water Heater, or the RHEEM 50G Heat Pump Water Heater HP50RH are two of many examples.
How it works: The heat pump draws air into it with a fan, which then sucks the warm air around an evaporator, the evaporator heats up and evaporates the liquid refrigerant inside as it draws heat from the air. The heat in the air in your home is literally transferred to the water in the tank!

Most air conditioners take the heat from your home and dump it outside, wasting it. But hybrid water heaters makes use of that extra heat by transferring into your water that you’ll use for washing dishes, doing laundry and taking showers.

Furthering the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) announced last summer the new steps being announced today strengthen coordination and better leverage the expertise and resources of both Departments to enhance our national energy security, as well as demonstrate the Obama Administration’s leadership in transitioning America to a clean energy economy.

“Advances in innovation are helping to solve our military challenges, protect our troops, and enhance our national security. At the same time, these efforts have the potential to yield spin-off technologies with both military and civilian applications that will help create jobs in the U.S. and speed America’s transition to a clean energy economy,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman. “Our joint efforts in everything from advanced vehicles to energy storage to grid security are protecting our men and women in uniform, promoting America’s economic prosperity, and improving our environment.”

“The steady march of technology has created a voracious appetite for energy. A Marine platoon in Vietnam took 2 or 3 radios on patrol, now a squad in Afghanistan takes over 10. On our ships, the ability to maintain steady, uninterrupted power, even if damaged, is absolutely critical for success. We need the ability to effectively store the energy we create – to be able to use it when it’s needed, and to use it where it’s needed,” said Secretary Mabus.

The Department of Defense’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (ASDR&E) aims to take advantage of early technology breakthroughs funded through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Using ARPA-E’s technical expertise in grid scale energy storage, batteries for electric vehicles, and power electronic, ASDR&E plans to develop an energy storage device that will provide future defense systems with long duration storage suitable for a variety of applications, including military bases and vehicles and eventually commercial grids.

Cost effective energy storage is also of interest to DOD’s Installations and Environment office, which will work with ARPA-E to assess the technology requirements for storage across military installations. Vulnerability to energy supply disruption is a significant challenge for facilities dependent on the commercial power grid, and backup power is both limited and expensive. Onsite renewable electricity generation combined with grid scale storage would allow installations to maintain critical functions in the event of grid disruption and enhance installations’ efforts to develop micro-grids for energy security.

The joint efforts announced today plan to be initiated during the 2012 fiscal year.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-Transphorm Inc., redefining energy efficiency with the most efficient and compact power conversion technology, emerges from stealth mode today at a private event at Google Ventures.

The company announced it completed a $20 million Series C financing led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital. This brings the total capital raised from all rounds to $38 million.

“We look forward to helping our partners open a new era in ultra-efficient and compact power conversion.”

Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses. From HVACs to hybrids, from servers to solar panels, Transphorm enables significant energy savings across the grid.

“We founded Transphorm to re-imagine what enhanced efficiency in the generation and use of electrical energy can do for our economy,” said Umesh Mishra, CEO of Transphorm. “Why put up with needless energy waste in every electrical system and device, when we can quickly and cost-effectively design products that are inherently energy efficient? Transphorm’s next-generation power modules cut waste, increase efficiency, reduce system size and simplify overall product design.”

“Since we deliver a complete solution from the original materials through to the final modules, we are in a position to rapidly innovate and deliver product in quick response to demand,” said Primit Parikh, President of Transphorm. “We look forward to helping our partners open a new era in ultra-efficient and compact power conversion.”

Founded by the experienced entrepreneurial team of Umesh Mishra and Primit Parikh, Transphorm boasts world-class engineers as well as top business and manufacturing executives who will guide the commercialization of Transphorm’s technology.

“Solving the enormous problem of power waste will create immediate, long-term shared value for Transphorm’s customers and investors,” said Randy Komisar, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “It was imperative for our firm to get behind Transphorm because it is the first company with a viable, commercial-scale solution to energy losses associated with high-voltage power conversion.”

Transphorm delivers custom-designed power modules that are easy to embed in virtually any electrical system, from consumer electronics products, to industrial motor drives, to inverters for solar panels and electric vehicles, and sells these modules to power equipment manufacturers. The company will unveil its first product at the upcoming APEC conference, taking place in Fort Worth, Tex. from Mar. 6 -10, 2011.

“We recognize the need to innovate to uncover new opportunities for optimal energy efficiency,” said Toshihiro Sawa, Managing Director, Technology & Development Division of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. “The time is right to develop power conversion technologies that can cut power waste and reduce excess heat, and Transphorm provides a viable solution today.”

“It is imperative that power conversion efficiency be increased both to cut unnecessary losses and to save energy, but also to reduce waste heat which has negative impact on volume, weight, cost and reliability,” said Dr. Leo Casey, CTO, Satcon Corporation. “The innovations made by Transphorm offer an attractive solution to this problem.”

About Transphorm

Transphorm is redefining electric power conversion, providing cost-competitive and easy-to-embed power conversion modules that reduce costly energy loss by up to 90 percent, and simplify the design and manufacturing of motor drives, power supplies and inverters for solar panels and electric vehicles. From material technology and device fabrication to circuit design and module assembly, Transphorm designs and delivers its power conversion devices and modules to meet the needs of global customers, helping them scale quickly and save money. By creating an ecosystem of electrical systems manufacturers powered by Transphorm, the company accelerates the adoption of application-specific power modules and paves the way for the next generation of electrical systems designed for optimal efficiency. To learn more about Transphorm, please visit www.transphormusa.com.

About Foundation Capital

Founded in 1995, Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm with a single purpose: building great companies. It is this entrepreneurial spirit along with a deep technical expertise that gives the partners the understanding, perspective, and enthusiasm to help promising companies in their formative stages. Foundation Capital targets innovative opportunities in cleantech, consumer Internet and infrastructure; telecommunications and networking; and enterprise software and on-demand services. www.foundationcapital.com

About Google Ventures

Google Ventures seeks to discover and help develop great companies – we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. Our investments range from seed to late stage, across a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean tech, biotechnology and health care. We embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the proverbial garage to global relevance. The Google Ventures team includes entrepreneurs, investors and innovators, along with some 24,000+ exceptional Googlers whose breadth of knowledge, experience and creativity constitute perhaps our most valuable resource. For more information, visit www.google.com/ventures.

About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Since its founding in 1972, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed entrepreneurs in over 500 ventures, including AOL, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq Computer, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Lotus, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Verisign, and Xilinx. KPCB portfolio companies employ more than 250,000 people. More than 150 of the firm’s portfolio companies have gone public. Many other ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions. www.kpcb.com

About Lux Capital

Lux Capital Management is a leading venture firm focused on founding, seed and early stage investments in emerging technologies. Lux takes an active role in helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses in Technology, Energy & Materials, and Life Sciences. The Lux investment team has founded more than 20 companies from scratch, including Caliper, Genocea, Illumina, Kala, Kurion, Lux Research, Nanosys, Neurocrine, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. For more information, visit the Lux Capital website at http://www.luxcapital.com.

By Andrew Myers . -Stanford University Press release reprint

Researchers in solar energy speak of a day when millions of otherwise fallow square meters of sun-drenched roofs, windows, deserts and even clothing will be integrated with inexpensive solar cells that are many times thinner and lighter than the bulky rooftop panels familiar today.

So, when your iPod is on the nod, you might plug it into your shirt to recharge. Lost in the Serengeti with a sapped cell phone? No problem; rolled in your backpack is a lightweight solar pad. Sailing the seven seas and your GPS needs some juice? Hoist a solar sail and be one with the gods of geosynchronous orbit.

It is not hard to envision a time when such technologies will be ubiquitous in our increasingly energy-hungry lives. That day may come a bit sooner thanks to a multidisciplinary team of Stanford engineers led by Mike McGehee, Yi Cui and Mark Brongersma, and joined by Michael Graetzel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Waves of energy

In an article published in Advance Energy Materials, the Stanford/EPFL team announced a new type of thin solar cell that could offer a new direction for the field. They succeeded in harnessing plasmonics – an emerging branch of science and technology – to more effectively trap light within thin solar cells to improve performance and push them one step closer to daily reality.

“Plasmonics makes it much easier to improve the efficiency of solar cells,” said McGehee, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford.

McGehee is the director of CAMP – the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics – a multidisciplinary, multi-university team tackling the challenges of thin-film solar cells.

“Using plasmonics we can absorb the light in thinner films than ever before,” McGehee said. “The thinner the film, the closer the charged particles are to the electrodes. In essence, more electrons can make it to the electrode to become electricity.”

Plasmonics is the study of the interaction of light and metal. Under precise circumstances, these interactions create a flow of high-frequency, dense electrical waves rather than electron particles. The electronic pulse travels in extremely fast waves of greater and lesser density, like sound through the air.

A perfect solar waffle

The lightbulb moment for the team came when they imprinted a honeycomb pattern of nanoscale dimples into a layer of metal within the solar cell. Think of it as a nanoscale waffle, only the bumps on the waffle iron are domes rather than cubes – nanodomes to be exact, each only a few billionths of a meter across.

To fashion their waffle, McGehee and team members spread a thin layer of batter on a transparent, electrically conductive base. This batter is mostly titania, a semi-porous metal that is also transparent to light. Next, they use their nano waffle iron to imprint the dimples into the batter. Next, they layer on some butter – a light-sensitive dye – which oozes into the dimples and pores of the waffle. Lastly, the engineers add some syrup – a layer of silver, which hardens almost immediately.

When all those nanodimples fill up, the result is a pattern of nanodomes on the light-ward side of the silver.

This bumpy layer of silver has two primary benefits. First, it acts as a mirror, scattering unabsorbed light back into the dye for another shot at collection. Second, the light interacts with the silver nanodomes to produce plasmonic effects. Those domes of silver are crucial. Reflectors without them will not produce the desired effect. And any old nanodomes won’t do either; they must be just the right diameter and height, and spaced just so, to fully optimize the plasmonics.

If you imagine your nanoself observing one of these solar cells in slow motion, you would see photons enter and pass through the transparent base and the titania (the waffle), at which point some photons would be absorbed by the light-sensitive dye (the butter), creating an electric current. Most of the remaining photons would hit the silver back reflector (the hardened syrup) and bounce back into the solar cell. A certain portion of the photons that reach the silver, however, will strike the nanodomes and cause plasmonic waves to course outward. And there you have it – the first-ever plasmonic dye-sensitized solar cell.

Trapping the light fantastic

It is easy to see why researchers are focused on thin-film solar technology. In recent years, much hope has been directed toward these lightweight, flexible cells that use photosensitive dyes to generate electricity. These cells have many advantages: They are less energy intensive and less costly to produce, flowing like newsprint off huge roll presses. They are thinner even than other “thin” solar cells. They are also printable on flexible bases that can be rolled up and taken virtually anywhere. Many use non-toxic, abundantly available materials, as well – a huge plus in the push for sustainability.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are not without challenges, however. First off, the very best convert only a small percentage of light into electricity – about 8 percent. The bulkier commercial technologies available today have reached 25 percent efficiency, and certain advanced applications have topped 40 percent. And then there is durability. The latest thin solar cell will last about seven years under continuous exposure to the elements. Not bad until you consider that 20 to 30 years is the commercial standard.

Both efficiency and reliability will have to improve. Nonetheless, engineers like McGehee believe that if they can convert just 15 percent of the light into electricity – a figure that is not out of reach – and tease the lifespan to a decade, we might soon find ourselves in the age of personal solar cells. An advance like plasmonics just might provide the spark necessary to take the field down a new and exciting path.

A matter of economics

Cheaper and cleaner will be the keys. Coal-based power is plentiful and cheap, but also comes at a steep environmental cost in gouged landscapes and polluted skies. At today’s commercial rates, however, even the best solar alternatives cost five times more per kilowatt-hour than coal. It is clear that economics, and not technology, is what stands between us and our solar future.

But McGehee and others are confident they can make thin solar cells more attractive.

Andrew Myers is the associate communications director for the School of Engineering.

Dated Post, but worth revisiting: Solar Industry

Despite the higher costs of Solar PV power generation, the net impact to the average Ontario household will be the equivalent of less than 1% of their electricity bills each year – less than the cost of one Tim Horton’s donut per month.

The stated rationale behind Ontario’s Green Energy and Economy Act and the associated Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program was to stimulate job growth and local investment while phasing out the use of coal in energy production. While solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation can help to achieve these goals, it is currently more expensive than other forms of power generation. Given this cost differential, the question is whether investing in solar PV represents good value for Ontario ratepayers and taxpayers.

A recent study by ClearSky Advisors has found that if the OPA continues to award FIT contracts to solar generators at the current rate over the next 5 years, it would translate into more than 70,000 person-years of employment in Ontario. Using data from official sources (i.e., IESO, OPA, Statistics Canada), peer reviewed studies and other recognized sources, the ClearSky Advisors’ report is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the expected results from developing solar power in Ontario.

In the study, solar PV generation was found to produce 12 to 15 times the number of jobs created by non-renewable sources such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear. With approval rates trending toward 3,000MW of solar power capacity over the next 5 years, the increased costs from solar PV to the average Ontario household would amount to the equivalent of 0.7% of their electricity bills per year compared to other energy sources.

“When you consider the economic impacts of solar, it is clear that it creates far more jobs than any other energy source while also decreasing health and environmental costs. Solar energy does, however, cost more to ratepayers than the alternatives,” says Tim Wohlgemut, Co-Founder of ClearSky Advisors. “The question to Ontario households is whether the job creation, lessened environmental impact and reduced healthcare expenses are worth the additional costs to their electricity bill.”

Source: ClearSky Advisors

Pasadena, CA – Bloom Energy®, today announced Bloom Electrons℠, a service that allows customers the flexibility to purchase electricity provided by the Bloom Box without incurring any other costs. The new Bloom Electrons service has generated tremendousinterest with existing and new customers.

The Bloom Electrons service allows customers to lock in their electricity rates for 10 years, delivering fixed predictable costs and significant savings versus the grid. Bloom manages and maintains the systems on the customers’ sites and the customers pay only for the electricity consumed. This allows immediate cost savings with no initial investment, making onsite clean, reliable, affordable energy more accessible.

In today’s economy, the ability for companies to have the freedom of choice to either purchase the Bloom Box or utilize the Bloom Electrons service while achieving savings under either program is very appealing. Under the Bloom Electrons service, customers can immediately save up to 20% on their energy bills. New Bloom Energy customers such as California Institute of Technology, BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), and Kaiser Permanente will see immediate benefits from this program, as will repeat customers such as Walmart, The Coca-Cola Company and Staples Inc. as Bloom Electrons allows them to quickly scale their deployments. This coupled with the opportunity to have cleaner, more reliable on-site electricity makes Bloom Electrons a compelling economic and environmental choice.

Bloom Electrons is about providing universal access to clean, reliable, affordable energy. Empowering our customers to buy energy on their terms is another significant step on ourjourney to change the way energy is generated and consumed in the world,” said KR Sridhar, principal co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy. “We are thrilled to welcome new customers and take special pride in our repeat customers.”

Bloom Electrons is a service that opens the door to new types of customers such as non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and utilities. The California Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most highly regarded scientific and technology universities, is one of the first to benefit from the Bloom Electrons with a 2MW installation.

“Bloom Energy enables Caltech to more effectively carry out its core mission of research and education by providing cleaner, more economical and predictable power which ultimately helps us achieve our strategic infrastructure and sustainability goals” said Dean Currie, vice president for Business & Finance at Caltech.

Fuel choices such as natural or biogas allow customers to manage their carbon footprint and Bloom Box modularity enables the solution to be scaled for specific sites. Now Bloom Electrons gives customers financial flexibility as well. Customers can continue to buy Bloom Boxes as a capital purchase or choose to sign up for the Bloom Electrons service. Bloom Energy created this program in collaboration with Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank.

“We are very pleased to have the opportunity to partner with Bloom Energy to structure Bloom Electrons , a unique service to secure baseload electricity. Bloom Energy has developed a technology that can transform the energy landscape and we look forward to supporting Bloom throughout its growth,” said Jerry L. Smith, managing director at Credit Suisse.

To date, the Bloom Energy fleet has provided customers over 40 million kilowatt-hours and eliminated approximately 45 million pounds of CO 2 emissions. Today’s announcement of Bloom Electrons and the 200 new systems that will initially be deployed, represent the next step on the path to deliver clean, reliable and affordable energy to everyone in the world.

About Bloom Energy

Bloom Energy is a provider of breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell technology that generates clean, highly-efficient power onsite from virtually any fuel source. Bloom Energy’s mission is to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world. The Bloom Energy Server is currently producing power for several Fortune 500 companies. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA.

For more information, visit www.BloomEnergy.com.