Starting out very modestly in 2011, Formula-E street racing was intended to demonstrate the exciting possibilities of electric vehicles to a crowd that knew little about them and to challenge companies to improve the technology.  The first “real” races were held in 2015 with cars of limited range, so limited in fact that to complete a 50-60 mile race required drivers to swap to fresh cars halfway in order to have enough charge to finish.  In 2020, the Gen 2 race cars had better batteries of double the capacity (54 kWh and 385 kg) and could avoid the swap.  

Races are now of limited duration, compared to the usual formula car events.  The races last 45-minutes plus one lap, with lengths of 50 to 62 miles depending on the course, compared to the average 200-mile length of a Formula 1 race.  The cars have front and rear motors with a total of about 500 hp, and use regenerative braking.  They weigh about 900 kg.  Average speeds have been about 110 kph, with top speeds of 280 kph (173 mph, slower than Formula 1 and not the mind-blowing 250 mph of an Indy car).  

For 2022, the new Gen 3 specs call for battery packs weighing 100 kg less while delivering peak power output of 350 kW vs. 250 kW now.  This will likely increase average and top speeds, resulting in longer races.  For the first time, there will be an option to provide a 30-second fast charge in a more typical pit stop, at a rate of 600 kWh/hour, giving an extra 4 kWh charge or about an additional 4 miles.  While modest now, the idea is to increase the fast recharge rate to add significant length to the race.  Williams Advanced Engineering won the contract to supply the new battery packs, still based on lithium-ion technology.  

The organizers of Formula-E clearly want to keep pushing to achieve parity with their bigger cousins and intend to increase the specs with each new generation.  The assumption, and a pretty good one based on prior experience, is that many of the advances in the race cars will end up improving production vehicles and commercial fast-chargers.  That is likely why some big manufacturers like ABB are big supporters of Formula-E.

Will we need 1.2 million public chargers? Gary Simon highlights how innovation will enable us to charge electric vehicles with fewer. This is an innovation in the ‘quality’ of charging as opposed to the ‘quantity’. The innovation may also be cheaper low end chargers, quantity over quality. I think quantity will be inevitable, everyone will drive EVs and demand access to reliable charging. Businesses will compete to meet the basic charging needs at the lowest cost. 

“Think of it like buying an employee a cup of coffee.” Will Barrett VP of Sales at ClipperCreek puts it succinctly. There are several things employers and businesses do to support employees and customers. The average employer spends over $100 on coffee a year per employee. If your employees and customs drive EVs, charging will be a perk people will expect. For a business, it represents a relatively small increase in cost and a potential revenue generator.

Reliable charging will influence people’s habits. 90% of daily drivers drive less than 65 miles; cars are parked for over 20 hours a day. Finding reliable spaces to charge for 4-8 hours is more valuable than a Fast Charger. Consumers driving EVs will change where they shop if it means getting a little extra charge. After buying my EV, I have changed where I shop based on charging availability.

The demand push for charging will be accelerated by public funding. The CEC is spending $384 million on ZEV infrastructure over 3 years, Southern California Edison is spending $436 million over 4, and San Diego Gas & Electric announced $44 Million recently. 

Innovation will make level 1 and 2 charging pervasive. EV drivers will value convenient access to reliable charging over fast charging. Businesses (Employers and Retailers) will do what they do best, compete.  Will that get us to the CEC 1.2 Million public charging stations? Perhaps, but it should make charging more ubiquitous.

Pau Lao, the new General Manager and CEO of SMUD appointed early this year, said that further innovations were a key to meeting 10% of the requirements to reach a zero-carbon power system by the end of the decade. Known technologies and applications would be enough to get 90% of the way there, but the rest depends on people creating new options no one has yet imagined. SMUD intends to spend the money to unlock this creativity, hopefully much of it close to home. This was welcome news to the sizable crowd that joined this special Perspectives Zoominar on Monday July 12. 

SMUD’s plan is very ambitious. It includes supporting “climate-friendly business growth” and “leaving no community behind”, all while capping rate increases at the inflation rate. Lau could not have been clearer about wanting to hear more ideas from the cleantech community. He pledged to sponsor meetings where the community could brief SMUD staff on the solutions they could offer to meet the 2030 goal. SMUD has always been a supporter of sustainability and clean energy, but this was a big step beyond anything SMUD has ever done before. Being open to more innovative ideas and offering support to early stage companies was a welcome message. The biggest innovations are needed in buildings and transportation. 

Lau said he wanted to lead the charge to bring as much of the money for clean infrastructure, EV charging, and renewables promised in the President’s budget to our region as possible. He wants to make the region a clear clean tech leader and test bed for as many good ideas as possible. He talked about shutting down all SMUD’s gas-fired power plants except the Cosumnes plant which will be repurposed for meeting peak needs, hopefully using green fuels. He wants to see at least 100 MW of grid-scale storage (and we would urge him to target more). He is a fan of vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home applications to use the growing EV fleet to become part of the storage solution, a sector where engineering innovation will be key to working out the problems with rearranging the grid to accommodate such changes. 

There was so much that he discussed, it can’t possibly be described in this summary. It is all recorded and available on our YouTube channel. If you didn’t attend, you really need to watch this. And if you were there, tell your cleantech friends that they need to tune in as well.

Concrete is all around us, being the second most widely-used substance in the world. It’s a simple material to make, yet buildings made of it can last for thousands of years. It is also responsible for about 8% of all CO2 emissions, so it is the target of research to try to make it “greener”.  

Concrete’s CO2 emissions come from its critical ingredient, cement.  At our recent perspective we heard from Jose Garcia PhD, assistant professor at Sac State researching concrete and explaining how to shrink its CO2 footprint.  Check out the video. 

From Prof Garcia presentation Source: NRMCA Concrete CO2 Fact Sheet

​For every 1 kilogram of cement that is produced, there is 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide that is produced. 60% comes from the chemical reaction, and 40% comes from the burning of fossil fuel. While cement is carbon intensive, concrete has the opportunity to be more environmentally friendly. Waste materials that would normally end up in landfills like fly ash, slag cement, and silica fume, can be added to concrete, reducing its emissions impact.

Professor Garcia researches alternatives to cement called Supplementary Cementitious Material and Portland limestone cements. He looks at how they could be used in more specialty applications. There are even opportunities for concrete to be injected with CO2 collected from the atmosphere making it stronger. But there are also issues with that.

Make sure you watch the video and look for us to invite Professor Garica back. 

You bought an EV.  You bought an in-home charger for a hefty sum, but 90% of the time it is not in use.  Why not use it by selling charging to those traveling to your neighborhood who want a convenient way to get a top-up while they visit friends and make a little extra money on the side?  That is the kernel of the idea that Angel Melchor, Koral Buch, and Meredith Roberts had when they entered the UC Davis Graduate School of Management’s Big Bang! Competition in 2020.  They developed that idea and now won the Big Bang’s $10,000 Clean Energy Prize.  And they have gotten serious about making this into a real business.  Recently, they presented their concept at one of our Perspectives events and you can watch it here.

“Borrowing” an EV charger has been a feature of the EV community since Tesla and Nissan introduced marketable EVs.  If there was a charge for this, it was handled informally.  Mostly it was just a courtesy.  There were websites listing contact info for those participating in this network, and arrangements were made peer-to-peer.   INN>CHRG believes this is not good enough to accelerate the adoption of EVs, with range anxiety still a significant point of reluctance to buy one and more assurance needed that charging will be available at a destination.  No need to hunt up a charger in a grocery parking lot and kill time waiting to accumulate a decent charge.  Better to park your car at a charger near your intended destination in a residential area and walk. Their bet is that if the personal investments in chargers – and even in chargers at commercial locations — could be used more efficiently, the worries about having enough charge for a trip would vanish.

The genius comes in making use of someone else’s charger certain and convenient but not complicated.  INN>CHRG intends to provide “matchmaking” software plus hardware to provide secure access to a charger, a billing and payment system, and a way to collect money from users for the service that does not run afoul of any legal restrictions.  They also need a system to be sure the price charged covers all the costs and leaves enough left over that, when split between the charger owner and INN>CHRG, keeps both happy.  They do not have all this done yet.  They are working diligently to make it happen.   They have a team working on the key software.  They have been accepted into two incubators that provide coaching and connections, and they have won two awards, with the most recent one the largest to date.  They will be entering other competitions and applying to CalSEED to continue the work of getting a prototype together.   They don’t have numbers yet on what it will cost the owner of the charger to install the equipment and apps required to make this work.  

They intend to work with those that at least have Level 2 chargers, preferably 32 to 80 amp chargers models that can give 25-50 miles of charge in an hour..  The charger itself costs $500-1000, with installation of a 30-850 amp 220v plug on top of that.  Many of these chargers are WiFi enabled and that may be a requirement to participate, since that may provide the way to assure.  The total price might be on the order of $2000 to be in the game, with maybe a $500-$1000 increment over what someone would have paid anyway.

There are faster chargers that operate at 480 v and over 100 amps that can provide 100+ miles of charge in 20-30 minutes, but these come at a prohibitive price for homeowners.  They require a 480 v transformer from the utility to be hooked up, plus equipment prices that would exceed $25,000.  These are more suited for commercial establishments.  However, the INN>CHRG app could still be useful as a way to reserve time on the chargers.

The team estimates they may get $500,000 in revenue in the first year the app is ready, and be up to $11.5 million by the fifth year.  This is consistent with the app being wildly popular.  This is likely going to be a function of convenience (low hassles) and price.  EVGo charges $1.50/hr on its L2 chargers for 25-40 miles of added range in that hour (4-6 cents per mile) and $0.35 per minute on its fast DC charger, providing 60-100 miles of added range in 20 minutes (7-9 cents/mile).   People will pay more for convenience and peace of mind, but how much more?  And the price needs to be high enough to make it worthwhile for the owner of the charger.  Would people pay $10 per hour for renting a neighborhood charger?  The cost of electricity for the 10 kWh used would be below $2 in almost all cases, except for charging during the most costly period in the early evening.  That leaves $8 to be split.  INN>CHRG proposes to take 40% ($3.20) and leave the owner of the charger with 60% ($4.80) to pay off the extra cost of providing the service plus enough incentive to make it worth doing.  Would that work?  That’s the next big question INN>CHRG will need to confront. 

It is no surprise that with continuing drought the “new normal” in the western US, finding ways to improve the management of this resource is becoming more urgent.  At our June 24 MeetUp, three of our region’s small companies that focus on water gave an update on their progress.  We had heard from each of them before, refocused their businesses in the search for a profitably way forward.

Tony Jones of Waterhound gained some important recognition recently by winning a 2020 CalSEED proof of concept award and the 2019 AI Tech Water Challenge of the Water Council, a global non-profit, the mission of which is to drive more innovation and better stewardship in water use.  Tony is focused on selling SaaS based on extensive data collection feeding an AI tool to improve operations of water treatment plants, markedly dropping costs and improving yields of fully treated water.  He is on a mission to improve water reuse to add to the water supply.

Chris Peacock, at AQUAOSO, is similarly focused on data analysis and software to improve users water resilience.  He is trying to improve the adaptation strategies of water users as climate changes and creates shortages.  One outcome that has been popular is a water risk scoring tool to help lenders and insurers get a better grasp of the situation of applicants.   This is a big pivot from AQUAOSO’s original intent to provide a platform for the buying and selling of water, and has been a very successful one.  They recently raised a $2 million Series C round to accelerate their progress.  Chris and his 13-person team are hoping to help customers “future-proof” their businesses as they identify water risks needing attention.  One method could be “regenerative” farming to take steps to preserve and enhance the water sources a property has.

Chuck Hansen of ElectroScan  believes he has the best tool on the market for detecting and characterizing leaks in water and wastewater pipelines.  While current systems lose 14% or more of the water they contain, current methods miss 90% of the leaks in the system and don’t do a good job of identifying the exact locations of leaks, leading to unnecessarily long excavations to visually pinpoint the leak.  Many of the leaks ElectroScan finds can be fixed in-situ without even digging up the pipe.  The company has won a long-string of awards going back to 2013 as a “best product” including one in 2021 as the Top Product of the Year from the Environment and Energy Leader conference (read the press release).  Chuck is a successful software entrepreneur who is learning now how different it is to sell a physical product.  He has assembled a 26-person team with offices not only in California but also in Florida, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia.  His big shift was in concentrating on the UK where there was a better reception for the Electroscan product.  With that revenue base building nicely, he is hoping to get more attention in the US where the gains to users could be huge, but the decision-making is more fragmented.  His 17 awards and 15 patents certainly help.

My view is that it does not, because of some technology advances. The figure seems scary and likely will be used by EV skeptics to oppose using public money to fund charging installations.  The figure comes from a recent CEC report that looked into the requirements to support a fleet of 8 million EVs in the state by 2030.  There is no doubt that more charging stations will be needed, but what kind of stations?  The report looks only at the current crop of available chargers and focuses on Level 2 chargers (220 V, giving a 150-mile charge overnight) and 50-100 kWh/hour Direct Current Fast Chargers that provide a full charge in an hour or a bit more.  This approach overlooks the significant progress toward even faster chargers, with some claims of being able to deliver a full charge in 5-10 minutes.  Porsche has a new 800-volt fast charger it claims will operate at 350 kWh/hour.  Changes to batteries will also be needed to reach extremely fast charging rates, but these too are happening.   

These technology developments raise the question whether most of the charging in terms of kWh delivered will continue to happen at home, at parking lots at work, and at retail store lots, or if the equivalent of filling stations will arise.  If they do, then the number of charging locations would be drastically reduced.  The existing fleet of 275 million light ICE vehicles on the road today in the US are refueled by only 111,000 filling stations, with a refill taking only 5-7 minutes.  About 16,000 of these are in California.

While some have assumed people would rather recharge at home, if that only provides an added 100-150 miles in range, then people would likely prefer the convenience of a central filling station that could add 300-500 miles of range in a short time.    There are still concerns about how to prevent an 8-slot, extremely fast charging station from melting down the distribution grid to deliver the power, those too are being worked on.

Keep an eye on updates of this assessment and see if in fact the extremely fast chargers change the picture over time.

SMUD is offering up to $100,000 to non-profit applicants for its community revitalization SHINE awards by July 30th.  On our June 17th Perspectives call, Betty Low of SMUD explained what the awards were for, and how to apply for them.  There will be four more webcasts you can join to find out directly about these awards and ask questions.  The dates are June 25, July 7, 16, and 26.  You can access the main website for more information here.

The intent of the awards is to fund non-profits to provide environmental equity and economic vitality to neighborhoods in SMUD’s service area.  While only non-profits can apply, companies large and small can benefit by collaborating on a project with a non-profit.  Betty said awards are given at three levels–$5-10K, $10-50K, and $50-100K.  Matching funds are required—50 cents for every dollar SMUD awards for the first level, and dollar for dollar for the other two.

The four categories for the applications are:

• Social Well-being—such as infrastructure improvements
• Healthy Environment—such as carbon emissions reductions and air quality improvements
• Prosperous Economy—such as small business and workforce development
• Mobility—such as charger installations

These are pretty broad categories.  Have an idea that would give you some business and help revitalize communities?  Find a non-profit partner to join you and make an application.  Funding would be available starting in 2022.  There is more than a month before the deadline, so get creative!  The website provides a listing of all past awardees to help give you some ideas for your application.

Check out the Video!

Five Sacramento Region companies have been accepted into the Clean Tech Open 2021 Cohort, a new high. Since its founding in 2005, the Clean Tech Open has been a significant resource for startups looking to upgrade their business skills and give them exposure to a bench of experts, mentors, and investors. Taking part in the CTO program more than doubles the chances of success for a startup. Ken Hayes, the National CEO for the Clean Tech Open, shared the benefits in our March 4 Perspectives discussion.

The CTO has educated over 1600 startups that have raised a combined total of $1.2 billion in investment. We hope regional startups from this cohort will be part of that success.

EasyEV – EasyEV allows EV customers to buy their EVs without paying for the batteries, essentially lowering the upfront cost by up to 30%. The EV user then pays back the cost of the battery on a per-mile basis in the range of $0.10 – $0.15 per mile only when they drive. After the battery life in their EV is over, we buy the used battery from them, replace it with a new battery while starting a new per-mile subscription with us, and sell it to companies using second-life batteries in storage applications.

EV Life – Empowers drivers to overcome the upfront cost and complication of buying an electric car by building an EV buying platform that brings together everything a driver needs to find and finance an EV. 

Gridware – Provides a hardware enabled grid monitoring system that detects and predicts faults before they can lead to catastrophic failures. The platform detects and predicts faults that ignite wildfires, expedites repairs during a power outage, and helps utilities demonstrate risk reduction to regulators through comprehensive asset health profiles.

Ogive Technology, Inc.- Developing a highly controllable, targeted spray nozzle that allows farmers to spray specific weeds and plants, reducing agricultural chemical use by 90%. Farmers save money and the adverse environmental effects of chemical use are reduced.

Waterhound Futures, Inc. – (Featured here) Waterhound’s cloud-based software models environmental, operational, and costing data from wastewater treatment plants. The software models the chemistry, physics and biology of each input stream and treatment process to create a digital replica and Water Quality Profile after each treatment step. 

Read about all of the Clean Tech Open’s 2021 Cohort.

In the journey of almost every startup, there comes a time when the realization sets in that the product, the value proposition, the channel to market, or the business model is not working. Then it’s time for “The Pivot”–basically rethinking what one is trying to do and reformulating the entire business. Learning to pivot is critical to a startup’s success. 

Chris Peacock, founder of AQUAOSO, has decades of experience in water and water risk. 

Aquaoso monitors water risk

Based on listening to early feedback, Chris pivoted AQUAOSO to create a water risk analysis system, like a FICO score but for water. This is important to lenders and investing because the risk from climate change includes financial risk from extreme weather events like flooding and drought. For these extreme events, the availability or quality of water is a leading risk indicator. He could offer this as a SaaS solution and collect user fees. He has created a trademarked Water Security Score that is becoming well-recognized in the industry, as well as related water databases.

Now AQUAOSO is more of a Fintech company rather than a water-savings broker. Being able to address water risk provides value to lenders to agricultural enterprises and Chris quickly got a dozen very satisfied customers.

1. Agriculture businesses can see how the risk can affect their business, helping them make better decisions.
2. Financial institutions can use the information to mitigate risk and improve borrower relationships.
3. Insurance companies can better understand the water risk their products carry and can take action to reduce it. 
4. Investors can better understand risk and decide to responsibly increase shareholder returns.

AQUAOSO has recently raised significant funding and is beginning to grow to a meaningful scale. Their pivot was crucial to getting traction with customers and investors. Here is a testimonial from one of their customers: 

“Using AQUAOSO has helped me cut down on research time and has provided me more water information than ever before! It is now the first step in my loan underwriting process and it has allowed me to devote more time toward expanding our loan portfolio.”

The AQUAOSO website is a great example of how to present valuable information to clients and educate them on the value of the product. It is worth a look.