Bringing together Boston's CleanTech news and events

deals, cleantech, startups Erin Kutz wrote:

OutSmart Power Systems, a Natick, MA-based startup developing a network of software and hardware for energy management and monitoring in commercial buildings, has added $1.8 million to a debt-based funding round that could total $4.5 million, according to an amended SEC filing. The company raised $805,000 toward a $1 million debt offering last October. OutSmart wrapped up a $2 million seed funding round in May 2009, from Bainco International Investors, the Clean Energy Venture Group, and Manifold Products, a Natick company it was spun out of in 2008.

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renewable energy, Solar, innovation Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

The French semiconductor manufacturer Soitec generated headlines in San Diego last month when it said it has been working with Tenaska Solar Ventures to develop a 150-megawatt solar plant in the desert east of San Diego—at an estimated cost of $500 million.

To support the project Soitec also revealed plans to build a factory somewhere in San Diego County to manufacture the proprietary solar panels that will be used to generate enough electricity for an estimated 55,000 households in the San Diego area.

Yesterday, Soitec Chairman and CEO André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé returned to San Diego with what he calls “a California story, but from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.” He briefed local reporters about the project, which needs a federal loan guarantee to secure financing, and later met with local officials to garner their support.

Soitec says its Concentrix Solar CPV (concentrating photovoltatic) technology converts sunlight into electric power at better than 37 percent efficiency for direct current, or at roughly 25 percent for alternating current. With some additional advances, Auberton-Hervé says the company’s technology should enable Soitec to increase the energy output of its solar modules to an unprecedented 50 percent DC efficiency in coming years.

As part of Soitec’s broader corporate strategy, Auberton-Hervé says the company’s Concentrix Solar division has worked with Chevron to complete construction of a 1-megawatt solar facility north of Taos, in Questa, NM. Auberton-Hervé says the facility, which has 173 Concentrix Solar panels that track the sun to maximize energy production, represents Soitec’s first “utility scale” project in the United States—and the first in a series of solar ventures the company aspires to develop. At least 30 states have established minimum requirements for renewable energy (California recently enacted a requirement for 33 percent renewable energy by 2020), making the U.S. an attractive market, especially in the sunbelt states, according to Auberton-Hervé.

André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé

Auberton-Hervé co-founded Soitec in 1992 with Jean-Michel Lamure to commercialize so-called “atomic scalpel” technology that is used to create multiple, ultra-thin layers in the silicon wafers used to make semiconductors. The technology led them to develop Silicon-On-Insulator (the “SOI” in Soitec) material, which has helped semiconductor makers create faster and more powerful processors by shrinking the distance between microcircuit patterns from 180 nanometers to less than 45 nanometers.

Soitec has grown from four employees in 1992 into a public company and global player in the semiconductor industry, with about 1,200 employees and a market valuation equivalent to roughly $1.4 billion, Auberton-Hervé says.

The CEO says Soitec’s solar strategy began to emerge in 2003, when …Next Page »

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Construction on the Cape Wind offshore wind power project could start as early as the fall, according to an announcement Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

cleantech, energy, Renewable Fuels Luke Timmerman wrote:

If clean-burning renewables are ever going to replace fossil fuels at the corner fueling station, it will probably require a rethinking of the biofuel production process at the basic level of genes and cells. That’s why I’m jazzed to say we’re convening the next big Xconomy Seattle event at one of the hotspots where scientists are asking the tough questions about this technology.

Our next Xconomy event, “Separating Hype from Reality in Alternative Fuels,” will be held from 5:15 pm to 8:30 pm on May 19 at the Institute for Systems Biology’s new headquarters in South Lake Union.

Entrepreneurs on the front lines know that much of the action in alternative fuels is happening in places like the ISB, so it will be fun to see sparks fly when we bring businesspeople in to mix with the scientists. One of the keynote speakers at this event, Margaret McCormick of Matrix Genetics, knows her way around ISB quite well, given her company has a collaboration with scientists there who are looking at gene modifications to algae that could turn these fast-dividing microorganisms into more efficient biofuel factories. Kristina Burow, another featured speaker from Arch Venture Partners and a co-founder of Sapphire Energy, will also be able to speak to the grand challenges of science that are being addressed at universities and startup companies.

There are a couple more program notes to add since I announced this event April 8. John Gardner, the incoming dean of academic affairs at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, will give a special 10-minute presentation on a new Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest project that has been supported by Boeing, Alaska Airlines, Sea-Tac International Airport, and other players with keen interest in the aviation fuel economy in the Northwest. And Michael Ramage, the CEO of Redmond, WA-based Asemblon, has also agreed to talk briefly about his company’s vision for making hydrogen a practical source of alternative fuel for big rigs.

I’m looking to add a couple more entrepreneurs with other ideas for how to generate alternative fuels, particularly those working on things other than algae. As always, I’m sharpening up my pencil to jot down the hard questions that need to be asked in this business, which has long gotten by on a lot of hype and government subsidies (think corn-based ethanol in the Midwest). And, as usual, I plan to run the microphone around the room to give you a chance to pose your questions. It will be a really interesting conversation focused on one of the big issues of the day, and a great chance to network with top people in the field of alternative fuels. So mark your calendars for May 19. See you there at the Institute for Systems Biology.

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cleantech, energy, deals Wade Roush wrote:

Continuing its run of massive alternative-energy investments, Mountain View, CA-based Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) said in a blog post today that it has invested roughly $100 million in the Shepherds Flat wind farm project under construction south of the Columbia River near Arlington, OR. Developer Caithness Energy, which is headquartered in New York, hopes the facility will produce 845 megawatts of electricity once it’s completed in 2012. Southern California Edison has already contracted to buy the electricity. Google recently invested $168 million in BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar concentrator project in California’s Mojave Desert, bringing its total clean energy investments to more than $350 million. The company said the Shepherds Flat project “is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology…This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities.”

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deals, startups, VC Gregory T. Huang wrote:

It wouldn’t be Monday in Boston without a slew of startup financings. On Patriots’ Day, no less—no curbside trash pickup, but plenty of new money to go around in the fields of mobile, travel, and cleantech.

—Waltham, MA-based GMZ Energy, a developer of thermoelectric materials and products, has raised $7 million in equity financing out of a $13 million offering, according to an SEC filing. Investors in the round weren’t disclosed, but the company’s website says it is supported by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and strategic corporate investors. GMZ (not to be confused with DMZ or TMZ) was founded in 2006 based on materials science research at MIT and Boston College. The company is focusing on applications in refrigeration, air conditioning, and converting heat (from waste or solar) to electricity.

—Cambridge, MA-based mobile startup Localytics announced today it has closed a new financing round led by existing investors Launchpad Venture Group and New York Angels, with new investor Hub Angels also participating. TechCrunch reported the size of the deal to be $2.5 million. Localytics, whose software helps mobile developers track usage of their apps across different devices, raised $700,000 in seed money about a year ago.

—Woburn, MA, and London-based SilverRail Technologies, an online travel search-and-ticketing startup focused on the European railway market, has raised $5 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing last week. Investors in the new round weren’t disclosed, though Charles Lax, James White, Cheryl Rosner (from Expedia and BuyWithMe), and Brad Gerstner (from NLG, Orbitz, and Room 77) are listed as directors on the form. Founder and CEO Aaron Gowell told me recently that the company has moved most of its executive operations to the U.K., but its development team is still in the Boston area. SilverRail raised a $9 million Series A round last summer from investors including Sutter Hill Ventures, GrandBanks Capital, PAR Capital, and Brook Ventures.

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Roundup, Venture Capital, wireless Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

While venture capital activity increased nationwide during the first quarter that ended in March, VC investing in San Diego fell to its lowest level since the first quarter of 2009. Our roundup of that and the rest of last week’s tech news begins now.

—Data on first-quarter venture capital activity arrived separately from New York-based CB Insights and the MoneyTree Report, which is put together by the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Thomson Reuters. CB Insights found that venture investors sunk $7.5 billion into 738 deals throughout the country, while the MoneyTree Report said $5.9 billion was invested in 736 deals. Both reports say the dollars invested were up sharply from the same quarter a year in 2010—27 percent in CB’s case and 14 percent, according to MoneyTree.

—In the San Diego area, VCs invested just over $100 million in 22 startups during the first quarter, a 55 percent drop in capital and a 29 percent decline in deals from the first quarter of 2010, according to the MoneyTree Report. CB Insights does not break out regional data on venture capital investing.

—The Ford Motor Company is targeting San Diego for the initial launch of its 100-percent electric vehicle later this year. In an exclusive interview, Ford’s Mike Tinskey told me how Ford used its popular Focus model compact as the automotive package for its all-battery drive train in order to leverage its existing economies of scale, since Ford has been selling about 2.6 million Focus compacts a year. Ford also hopes to differentiate itself from rival EV carmakers by developing its own charging stations, which it says are capable of recharging an EV twice as fast as other chargers.

—San Diego’s Mushroom Networks has developed HD video capability for the Teleporter technology it launched a year ago. Mushroom Networks said that makes its Teleporter the first cellular-based high-definition live video streaming technology, enabling a TV crew to transmit real-time HD video from any location where …Next Page »

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cleantech, energy, startups Luke Timmerman wrote:

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and scientists have dreamed for years about turning it into a source of clean alternative fuel. The vision hasn’t materialized, but one Seattle-area entrepreneur, Michael Ramage of Asemblon, says he is more confident than ever that this idea can reach the marketplace in about two years.

“I’m optimistic,” he says.

Asemblon, advised by University of Washington bioengineering professor Buddy Ratner, has long seen itself as a key technology provider to the hydrogen fuel business. The company, founded in 2005, has raised about $12 million since inception to develop organic carrier molecules that are supposed to make hydrogen practical as a liquid fuel. The big knock on hydrogen has always been that it requires a whole new infrastructure for distribution and storage, making it too expensive and impractical to replace fossil fuels.

Asemblon’s way around this problem is through its science, and an incremental business strategy. Scientifically, it is seeking to enable hydrogen to be stored at a wide range of extreme hot and cold temperatures, and without high pressure tanks, so people can carry it around in containers or ship it on pipelines or on trucks like gasoline. That’s much different from the hydrogen fuel of today, which must be kept under high pressure and in cold temperatures. That isn’t cost efficient, and raises safety concerns in the event of a crash.

The business plan is to license the hydrogen storage technology to partners, who will put it to work in the commercial trucking business. Commercial trucking makes sense as a place to start, Ramage says, because it’s a large market that accounts for about one-fifth of all the U.S. transportation fuel. And yet it doesn’t represent such a huge distribution challenge, because most of the fuel goes through about 500 commercial fueling stations dotted along Interstate highways from coast to coast, says Ramage, who will be a speaker at Xconomy Seattle’s next event, titled “Separating Hype From Reality in Alternative Fuels“ on May 19th.

One of Asemblon’s partners, Los Angeles-based Vision Industries, has said it believes hydrogen fuel stations could be equipped to serve cross country truckers for less than $100 million. And Ramage says one of Asemblon’s other prospective partners—whom he wouldn’t identify—has told him its fleet of 17,000 commercial trucks could save $120 million to $130 million a year by switching to hydrogen fuel, assuming diesel stays where it is, at more than $4 a gallon on average nationally.

“The economics are what will really drive this,” Ramage says.

While Ramage isn’t in position to announce any …Next Page »

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Natick energy management technology firm OutSmart Power Systems LLC has bumped its planned debt round from $1 million to $4.5 million, and brought in a new tranche that boosts the debt financing in the round to $2.6 million, according to federal documents.

Newton’s GMZ Energy Inc., a maker of thermoelectric materials based on nanotechnology developed at MIT, has raised $7 million from a planned $13 million investment round, the first institutional round for the company.

In an attempt to help schools go green, Ashland company IdeaPaint Inc. will be giving away up to 1 million square feet of its paint-on whiteboard paint to schools during this week in recognition of Earth Day.

VC, startups, deals Gregory T. Huang wrote:

The latest venture capital stats for the first quarter of 2011 are a mixed bag. Maybe it’ll take a little longer for the Boston area to witness what a lot of people are calling the new tech bubble.

Venture firms poured $639 million into 90 New England companies in the first three months of this year. That’s down 19 percent from the $790 million that was invested (in 102 deals) in the same period a year ago. But it’s a 13 percent increase over the $566 million (in 93 deals) in the fourth quarter of 2010.

That’s all according to the MoneyTree Report, prepared by the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Thomson Reuters. (The trend is in rough agreement with the Massachusetts numbers from CB Insights, which my colleague Bruce summarized yesterday.)

Looking at the 10 biggest New England investments from the quarter (see below), about half of them were biotech-related, but the top deal went to Harvest Power, a waste-to-energy startup. And tech/software companies accounted for three deals.

Here’s the top 10 VC deals list for the first quarter, according to MoneyTree, with links to our coverage:

1. Harvest Power, Waltham, MA, $51.7 million

2. RainDance Technologies, Lexington, MA, $37.5 million

3. Genocea Biosciences, Cambridge, MA, $35.1 million

4. HubSpot, Cambridge, MA, $32 million

5. CardioFocus, Marlborough, MA, $30.6 million

6. Movik Networks, Littleton, MA, $25 million

7. Constitution Medical Investors, Boston, MA, $20 million (a little bit about this investment firm here)

8. Euthymics Bioscience, Cambridge, MA, $17.2 million

9. Living Proof, Cambridge, MA, $16 million

10. Gemvara, Lexington, MA, $15 million

And here are some other notable financings we’ve seen in the past three months that didn’t make MoneyTree’s top 10 list from Q1:

—Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, MA, $40 million (might count for Q2 2011)

—Qteros, Marlborough, MA, $22 million (might be from Q4 2010)

—Jumptap, Cambridge, MA, $20 million (company hasn’t confirmed any details)

—iWalk, Cambridge, MA, $15 million (might be from Q4 2010)

—SCVNGR, Cambridge, MA, $15 million (might be from Q4 2010)

—SustainX, West Lebanon, NH, $14.4 million

—ExaGrid Systems, Westborough, MA, $10.6 million (the only Boston-area firm in the Wall Street Journal’s recent list of top 50 venture-backed companies)

—DataXu, Boston, MA, $10 million (from the MoneyTree list, but not reported in the media)

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VC, Venture Capital Surveys, Economy Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

“”Figures often beguile me,” Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago, as he worked his way up to the proposition that “There are three kinds of lies: ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics.’” I wonder what the cantankerous Twain would say today about the disparities in data concerning venture capital activity that are issued each quarter.

The first quarter venture capital investment activity that came in yesterday from the New York data services firm CB Insights showed a substantial gain in nationwide funding. Now comes the MoneyTree Report, which shows a modest increase in capital and a decline in the number of deals.

According to the MoneyTree Report, venture capitalists invested $5.9 billion in 736 deals nationwide during the first quarter of 2011. That was a 13.7 percent increase in capital and a 6.4 percent decrease in the deal count, compared to the same quarter in 2011, when nearly $5.2 billion went into 787 deals nationwide. The report is prepared by the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Thomson Reuters.

CB Insights said yesterday that VCs invested $7.5 billion in 738 deals during the first quarter. That was a 27 percent increase in dollars and a 1 percent gain (which isn’t a significant change) in deal count over the first quarter of 2010, when CB Insights counted $5.9 billion and 730 deals.

The numbers vary because the surveying firms rely on different sources, and they use different ways to count and categorize venture deals. For example, CB Insights counted half of the $950 million funding deal that Groupon announced in December in the fourth quarter of 2010 and half in the first quarter of 2011. What one firm counts as a cleantech deal another might count as energy or IT.

A more worrisome trend has been unfolding in the MoneyTree data about venture investment activity in San Diego. CB Insights doesn’t provide regional data in its report, and MoneyTree found that VCs invested just over $100 million in 22 San Diego startups during the first quarter of 2011. That’s a 55 percent drop in capital and a 29 percent decline in deals from the first quarter of 2010, when venture investors put nearly $223 million into 31 companies.

There was also a drop for the San Diego region during the …Next Page »

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Solectria Renewables LLC, a maker of solar power inverters based in Lawrence, said that it will be supplying inverters to 5.3 megawatts worth of Massachusetts solar projects.

A pair of Maine companies, one developing floating wind turbines and one enabling convenience store marketing campaigns, have received development awards from the Maine Technology Institute.

New England Clean Energy Council's Mitch Tyson blogs: This is the launch of the Energy Leaders Forum – a collaboration between the New England Clean Energy Council and Mass High Tech. We have brought together approximately 20 leaders from the clean energy cluster in New England to start a dialogue on the energy issues of the day.

MHT reporter Kyle Alspach blogs: Owning a car is among the great symbols of what it means to be a middle-class American. So that’s part of what makes the growing carsharing trend — and the successful Zipcar IPO, which seems to affirm its market acceptance — so interesting.

cleantech, Electric Vehicles, innovation Thomas Lee wrote:

Randy Sumner takes the hockey puck- like device and holds it several inches above a pad. The light on the device instantly turns on.

“Pretty cool, huh?” says Sumner, Delphi’s director of global hybrid vehicle business development.

Very cool. Even cooler was the nearby Think City EV parked over a much larger pad. Electricity wirelessly flowing from the pad powered a display sign perched on top of the car.

Look Ma! No wires!

Seven months after partnering with WiTricity of Watertown, MA, Delphi unveiled the fruits of their work at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) annual conference in Detroit: a prototype car equipped with WiTricity’s technology that uses magnetic waves to wirelessly transmit electricity.

WiTricity, founded by MIT physics professor Marin Soljačić in 2007, has designed a transmission coil that connects to a small electronics module and converts the traditional electrical current found in a home or office to a higher frequency and voltage, to create an oscillating magnetic field around the coil. If a separate coil designed to resonate to the same frequency is close enough to the source, power is transferred between the two coils.

The charging system developed by Delphi and WiTricity would enable cars powered with electricity to reboot without having to plug into a power source via a cord. It would only require cars to park over a wireless energy source on the floor of a garage or embedded in a paved parking spot, which would then transfer the power to the vehicle’s battery charger.

The idea of wireless electricity is not new. Until now, the biggest problem has been finding a way to retain enough power in the transfer process.

The prototype, Sumner says, generates about 95 percent efficiency, meaning only five percent of the power being generated gets lost in transmission. Delphi hopes all cars equipped with the technology will get at least 90 percent. The pad powering the Chevy prototype was transmitting about 2.6 kw, or 16 amps, of electricity, about the equivalent of Delphi’s current Level 2 wired chargers.

Sumner says WiTricity’s technology enabled Delphi to design much smaller coils and achieve greater distance between the bottom of the car and the charging pad. In theory, this could allow bigger trucks and vehicles to also use the technology.

In an interview, Andrew Brown, Delphi’s executive director and chief technologist, says wireless charging will go a long way to boosting the popularity of electric cars. Wireless charging pads could be installed in home garages, parking lots, offices, shopping centers, he says.

“It will eliminate this range anxiety,” says Brown, referring to consumers who worry they will run out of juice before finding the next charging station. Also, he says, “The average consumer is not accustomed to electric cars. [They worry] ‘Am I going to get dirty?’ or “Will I get electrocuted?’”

Wireless charging helps with both those issues. All consumers have to do is “park and charge,” Sumner says.

But Delphi still faces a long road from lab prototype to mass production. The company needs to work with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to figure out how to best integrate WiTricity’s technology into cars.

Delphi envisions a car that can be charged both by wired and wireless charging stations. The company also needs to find ways to shrink the electronics and reduce overall cost.

Delphi officials, however, are confident in the technology. They estimate the first cars using it will roll of the assembly lines in 2014 or 2015.

“This is real,” Sumner says. “This works.”

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cleantech, VC, startups Thomas Lee wrote:

The boys are back in town.

Fresh from the high finance worlds of Chicago and New York, University of Michigan grads Tim Streit and Ryan Waddington have returned to the state to launch Huron River Ventures (HRV), a $15 million fund aimed squarely at cleantech startups.

HRV has so far raised half of the money it needs to complete the fund.

Retaining homegrown talent has been a top worry for Michigan’s entrepreneurial community. Yet, Streit and Waddington are just two of several young, ambitious U-M alum who have returned to Michigan to start venture funds. That group also includes Marc Weiser and Tony Grover at RPM Ventures and Michael Godwin and Jason Townsend at Resonant Venture Partners.

A native of Farmington, MI who studied mechanical engineering at the U-M, Streit spent most of his career in Chicago. He worked in investment banking with JP Morgan and helped start the corporate venture unit at HSBC.

But both jobs ultimately left him dissatisfied.

“I wasn’t thrilled with what I was doing,” says Streit, referring to JP Morgan job. “How did it give back to the community?”

Interest in venture funds also tends to ebb and flow inside big corporations, he says. In four years at HSBC, the unit completed only two deals.

Waddington had a similar experience at DTE Energy Ventures, where he worked after receiving a degree in aerospace engineering from the U-M and a master’s in civil environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin.

“I wanted to apply myself to our biggest problems,” Waddington says.

DTE looked at everything from fuel cells and energy storage to power electronics and waste energy. “But they just didn’t want to do anything,” he says.

Waddington later worked at NextEnergy in Detroit, helping to make seed investments in cleantech firms. He later ended up at Ziff Brothers Investments in New York, who recruited him to run a $250 million cleantech fund. However, Ziff ultimately became more interested in oil and gas investments, whose prices were skyrocketing at the time.

Streit says the time is right for a pure cleantech fund in Michigan.

“It became evident to me that the future of Michigan is cleantech,” Streit says. “There are a lot of people looking for that next evolution.”

HRV says it has more than 100 potential deals in its pipeline. So far, the firm has only invested in semiconductor startup Ambiq Micro but HRV will probably complete a couple of deals this quarter, Streit says.

“The biggest positive surprise has been the quality and volume of cleantech deal flow,” Waddington says, a stark contrast to his time at NextEnergy, where he was running out of companies to finance.

“At NextEnergy, I wasn’t sure I could do it anymore” deals, he says. “Today, the picture is different.”

Michigan has attracted the attention of coastal cleantech funds, Waddington says. They won’t cut checks on their own but would partner with local funds like HRV. For one thing, the competition is so intense for deals on the coast, a bit of a price bubble is starting to emerge, he says.

What’s missing in Michigan are serial, successful entrepreneurs in cleantech, Waddington says.

That’s where HRV wants to step in.

“We want to help the next generation of entrepreneurs in our state,” Streit says. “That’s part of our job. We can be part of the solution.”

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