Blog
EV Innovation Right in Our Backyard
On September 27, we held an in-person MeetUp at the California Auto Museum with three speakers talking about their work in manufacturing vehicles and improving their designs from bases here in our region. First to speak was Jacob Panachaveettil, an engineer with...
IRA is an Investment in Battery Innovation
Among many things, the inflation reduction act (IRA) is a big investment into our domestic battery production. To get the details, you can read about the IRA from Moss Adams here. Here is what has us the most excited: The establishment of a $27 billion Greenhouse...
LiCAP Technologies Developing a Game-Changing Electrode Material
A Rancho Cordova-based innovator is poised to make a big contribution to lowering lithium ion battery costs and improving their performance. LiCAP Technologies is working on an “activated dry electrode” that is significantly better than the wet slurries now used. ...
Big Step: Sunnova to Create Community Microgrids as Regulated Utilities
Rather than run away from being regulated, Sunnova sees advantages in becoming a regulated utility in order to advance its plan to collaborate with developers of new neighborhoods to create shut-off safe microgrids. The CPUC opened this possibility by creating a...
A Friendly New Lender for Climate Tech Companies
Our friend Sedale Turbovsky at OpenGrants did a web interview with Dmitry Gershenson of Enduring Planet recently to highlight the increased availability of loans to build your company. Enduring Planet is a much different lender than a bank because they understand...
California Sunlight Finds a Niche
In the same year CleanStart was founded, Bing Gu founded his startup, California Sunlight. Bing and his team were always coming up with solar-based products that others had overlooked and built a business around that. The early years were lean, but now Bing has some...
Added Insights From 2022 Progress Report
In response to requests for more discussion on the results of our latest survey of the regional core clean tech cluster, we held a Zoom call on June 23. Here are some of the points we covered: The increase in jobs and opportunities here is making the area much more...
Water From Thin Air: A New Frontier?
It is hard to tell whether sustainable energy or water shortages will be the biggest crisis in the future, but both are big. We have been watching for any new ideas to deal with water shortages. The standard approaches of desalination continue to be the dominant...
New Frontiers in Load Flexibility and Load Management
On May 12 we returned to the hot topic of grid edge technologies to match supply and demand while avoiding as much new investment as possible. These technologies involve a combination of hardware for sensing and control and sophisticated software that can use that...