CleanStart Perspectives with Christoph Lienemann of PEM Motion

CleanStart Perspectives with Christoph Lienemann of PEM Motion

Join us as we chat with Christoph Lienemann of PEM Motion about future mobility battery projects.
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Christoph Lienemann is responsible for the North American operations of PEM Motion, a consulting and engineering company focused on future mobility solutions and their industrialization. He manages their teams in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. PEM Motion helped establish the California Mobility Center, a Sacramento-based public-private innovation hub and industry-sized tech shop enabling the future of mobility.

CleanStart Perspectives are short online conversations to connect the greater Sacramento clean tech entrepreneurship community and share insights, experiences, and outlooks. Join us as we welcome our featured guests to share their perspective on what entrepreneurs and innovators can do to thrive and grow.

Register and we’ll send you the Zoom login information prior to the meeting time.

CleanStart Perspectives are recorded through Zoom.

CleanTech Meetup: Energy Storage

CleanTech Meetup: Energy Storage

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Desten Takes Another Step Toward Fast Charging

Desten Takes Another Step Toward Fast Charging

We have written several times about the opportunities and challenges of ultrafast charging systems.  Here is an article on a recent development.   Hong Kong-based company Desten is promoting its 900 kW charging system and the remarkable battery that goes with it, promising a 250-mile charge in under 5 minutes.  And, yes, it is always good to be a little skeptical of these claims, but in general it is clear that multiple companies continue to push the envelope on what is possible.  Desten is targeting putting the system at existing service stations. As we have noted before, part of the solution on fast charging is likely to involve putting a bank of batteries between the grid and the chargers to avoid the chargers slamming the grid.  Desten has exactly that idea and would include a container full of batteries on-site as well.  It is not clear if the system works only with their batteries, but Desten is going to need allies among the EV manufacturers to get its system into the market.  It seems to have a deal with Swiss sports car company Piëch.  Desten’s battery apparently has an energy density of 160 Wh/kg, less than the best in EVs now, but does not need an active cooling system.  

An interesting development and one to watch.

Resurgence in Clean Tech Companies Noted in Comstock’s

Resurgence in Clean Tech Companies Noted in Comstock’s

In the December Innovation issue, Comstock’s Magazine ran an article entitled “Power Surge” discussing the boost in new clean tech companies in the region.  Included in the article were profiles on RePurpose Energy, Simpl Global, Hank, and Spin Storage. If you’re not a subscriber, you should consider spending $18 to become one. Comstock’s has been a long-term supporter of CleanStart and we appreciate that they see clean tech as an important component of the regional economy.   We hope to do our usual survey of the clean tech sector in the coming year, hoping Covid does not make this impossible.  That should give us a very good view of how the sector is growing.  We know that there has been an unusually large number of new companies formed in the past two years, but we also see that some of the stalwarts from prior years have been hammered by the pandemic. 

 

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.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EYBlueTech Valley, Revrnt, 

Moss AdamsPowerSoft.biz, Greenberg Traurig, Momentum,

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State

New Horizons in the Relationship Between Ratepayers and the Utility

New Horizons in the Relationship Between Ratepayers and the Utility

If you were ever curious about the new ways utilities may be relating to their customers now and in the future, a great way to get a quick introduction is to watch the video of this outstanding discussion on the topic we did on December 3.  It was probably the most informative MeetUp we have had, and one of the most popular with 46 people attending.  If you missed it, you can view the recording on our YouTube Channel and below.

We had three outstanding speakers.  Dr. Karen Herter started things off by reviewing her experiments on getting amazing demand reductions using clever communications technology and instantaneous information on the changing prices of electricity.  She had done one experiment piggybacking a signal on  the FM broadcast of local Capital Radio.  Another used a small in-home receiver.  But that was a minor part of what she found out.  She had customers use a number of interactive thermostats and pre-cooling settings to see what those customers considered the best combination of features and ease of use.  With the best system there were astonishing cost savings and demand reduction, far more than Time of Day rates had achieved.  She is on loan to the CEC to help them devise the best strategies for applying her work.  The key she indicated was getting a much better database of rates and communication protocols with standardization so that more vendors of energy-saving equipment can rely on that information to control their devices.

Tanya Barham of the Community Energy Lab in Oregon talked about her experience, borne out of various companies she had worked for previously, in finding simple systems to apply AI control to reduce energy use and costs in schools, churches and municipal buildings.  She sees this expanding to become part of the strategy for decarbonizing buildings.  She agreed that the kind of database work Dr. Herter was doing was absolutely essential to provide wider applications of user-based demand reductions.  In her work, she was seeing a two-month payback on investments made in simple software systems and sensors to manage building energy use.  

Ryan Braas of SMUD introduced us to the SMUD Energy Store, an initiative that is showing great results in getting energy-saving devices in the hands of users through an online store.  SMUD is continuing to expand its offerings on the Store site, but one of the most popular features, Ryan said, was the “Instant Rebate”.  While utilities across the country offer rebates to customers purchasing various energy-saving devices, often a great deal of paperwork and wait time is needed to actually get the money—fill out a form, mail it in with a copy of the receipt for the device and a copy of a recent bill to verify one is a customer of the utility, wait for the request to be entered into the system at the utility and 30-60 day later a check arrives in the mail.  With the Energy Store, the rebate is taken immediately and deducted from the price of the device.  The user is already verified as a customer and the proof of purchase is inherent as a part of the process.  So bingo no wait, no extra paperwork.  This is a great example of a utility establishing an entirely new relationship with its customers, one the customers end up valuing highly.  If you are SMUD customer and haven’t visited the Energy Store you should.  Go the the Smud.org site and find it.

The three presentations were followed by a lively Q&A, and more importantly, the audience used the Chat Room function to ask questions and get answers there as well.  This is really becoming a very useful way to inform our cleantech community.  If you haven’t attended one of these monthly sessions, you really should.  We clearly are getting people far from our home territory participating, and that is making it all the better.

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.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EYBlueTech Valley, Revrnt, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

Momentum, College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State