Helios Altas Hits New Milestones

Helios Altas Hits New Milestones

Remember sitting outside at EcoFitness (on one of the hottest days of the year) hearing Mike Carroll talking about his Powerball small hydro technology at our June 21 MeetUp?  remember his excitement about being close to having a microgrid going operational in the Philippines with one of his units and some solar in a hybrid configuration? Well he did it!   It is all operational now.  You can learn more about the system that has provided first power to 150 people here: https://biofriendlyplanet.com/green-alternatives/solar/installation-of-the-firsthybrid-solar-micro-hydro-grid-project-in-the-philippines-is-complete/.  Mike adds, “With this system we have changed the architecture of the Powerball’s take off system which increased the power output of each of the units from 300 watts up to over 500 watts from the same water flow. This has enabled the village to expand the power usage well beyond what was originally intended. In the next phase of this project the Hydrofarm will be expanded by adding more PowerBall™ units and the battery storage will be doubled in size. The local electric co-op is expected to purchase the system to meet some of its RE credit requirements and also as a means for extending its supply grid to far flung areas of the Philippines such as Balingasag.” Mike also got an investor commitment to proceed with his 100-times larger capacity unit.  “We plan on this being the largest size unit we will manufacture,” Mike says. “This generator is approximately 2 meters in diameter, so it can be shipped in containers standing vertically. It will be able to produce up to 30 kW of power and multiple units can be installed in the same PowerWheel™ to produce more power.” While most of his attention has been focused overseas on rural areas without access to grid power, Helios also has a commitment from the Nevada Irrigation District to purchase 10 o fhte larger units when they are ready.   The next big milestone will be in putting together the $13 million in funding he is seeking to stay on track for over $200 million in sales in the next five years.   Great stuff!
Thomas Hall
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.
Sac State’s Living Building Project

Sac State’s Living Building Project

        California State University Sacramento is on the path of making history with their new project that aims at creating a certified living building on campus. The project is being led by Dr. Rustin Vogt of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Professor Gareth Figgess of the Construction Management Department along with the Campus’ Sustainability director, Ryan Todd. The students and faculty are currently in the developmental stage of the project and are in the process of renovating the same building used in the solar decathlon. With the help of students from Dr. Vogt’s Material Selection class and other students who wish to be a part of this historic project, the goal of the project is to establish the first building that is Living Building certified on a state college campus. The purpose of the building is to serve as a hands on learning platform for students and faculty at CSUS. The Living Building will allow for sustainability challenges to solved and worked on by senior project students and faculty alike so that they may apply energy and building innovations. The driving force for Vogt to establish the first the living building on a CSU campus is to be able to provide a platform for students to learn and gain experience with sustainability which is gaining more momentum every day in the current work environment for engineers.

        The first steps in renovating the solar decathlon building to a living building certified platform is to ensure that a sustainable framework is being used which calls for non-red listed materials. Dr. Vogt along with the student and faculty helping are currently producing biodiesel fuel that is made on campus to run a biodiesel generator in order to power all the equipment used while working on the building. This will ensure that every aspect of the living building has been created and renovated with sustainability in mind. The long term plan for the living building is to serve as an evolving learning platform that will serve the community and students for years to come.  With the help of the faculty and students at Sacramento State University, the Campus may be well on its way to ensuring that they are the first State college in the nation with a building that is green certified and only the second living building in the State of California.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CleanStart has a new face supporting the region’s Entrepreneurs.  Renonedo Williams is a CSU Sacramento Mechanical Engineering Student who is the newest intern at CleanStart.   He is entering his final semester at Sac State and is looking forward to connecting with as many clean tech startups as possible and understanding each of their value propositions, to connect his enthusiasm of building things to his goal of being his own boss. Renonedo has a background in design and material selection

The Global Climate Action Summit: What it means for businesses locally

The Global Climate Action Summit: What it means for businesses locally

Over 3500 people attended the first Global Climate Action summit in San Francisco September 12-14.  It was a pretty amazing assemblage of leaders from business, non-profits, cities and state governments, and philanthropies.  Outside the Summit, over 300 affiliate events were held throughout the city as well. One of those was Prof. Dan Sperling of the  Institute of Transportation Studies(ITS) atat UC Davis talking about three revolutions in transportation–autonomous driving, electric, and shared vehicles.

The intent of the summit was for all these various interests to commit to actions for a climate-safe world, even if their nations (like the U.S.) were backing off from meeting the Paris Accords.  As Michael Bloomberg said, meeting 50-80% of America’s pledge to cap and reduce greenhouse emissions would require action at the state and local level anyway. By the conclusion of the summit, participants had made new commitments to a low-carbon economy that would:

  • Result in $26 trillion in economic benefits worldwide through 2030.
  • Generate over 65 million new low-carbon jobs in 2030.
  • Avoid over 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution in 2030.
  • Generate, through just subsidy reform and carbon pricing, an estimated $2.8 trillion in government revenues per year in 2030—funds that can be used to invest in other public priorities or reduce distorting taxes.

You can find the details here . Among the specific actions were commitments of 400 institutional investors to devote $32 billion in safe-climate investments, the creation of a task force to enhance the climate and sustainability disclosures in financial documents, commitments of health care systems to become carbon-neutral, and pledges to harness the internet more for greenhouse gas reductions.  Over 70 big cities agreed to become carbon-neutral by 2050.

At the Summit, it was announced that now over 400 companies in 38 countries along with state regional and local governments have 100% renewable energy targets.  Sixty state, regional and local governments along with 23 multinational businesses have committed to make their fleets of vehicles and buses zero emission. The list is simply too long even to summarize.  You can see separate articles on the commitments in five challenge areas.  

To CleanStart, the big question is what this all means for business opportunity.  Clearly there are going to be a lot more buyers looking for low-carbon products in order to fulfill their pledges.  Here are some ideas:

  1. Be ready to document how your product reduces the carbon footprint of a customer and helps that customer meet its safe-climate commitments.  Offer some simple “carbon calculators” in your sales pitch to allow customers to enter their own baseline information from which reductions can be calculated through use of your product.
  2. Offer carbon-footprint calculating software.  This will likely need some sort of certification that the calculations are accurate and legitimate.
  3. Make the carbon and renewable energy content of your product easy to find, even if you are not offering something that provides those reductions directly
  4. Show how your product is low-carbon cost-efficient.  The going price for a carbon offset is about $10 per ton of CO2-equivalent removed.  Show how you can beat that.
  5. Sacramento and West Sacramento have created a Climate Commission to identify technologies that will help the cities meet their carbon-neutrality goals.  Be sure to give them your ideas in order to get on their lists.
  6. Be ready to deal with more cautious customers.  As smaller companies want to meet carbon reduction goals as well, they will be more risk averse in trying new products than the larger companies.  Bulk-up your balance sheet or offer your products through a more established player.

This new commitment to reducing carbon footprints could be a bonanza for clean tech companies but also will require rethinking a bit HOW you sell your product.

[Thanks to Meg Arnold for sharing some of her insights from Summit]

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.