Tag Archives: energy

This stove cleanly burns plastic and charges a phone

TakePart | Mashable | Nov. 14, 2014

KleanCook stove

The KleanCook stove inspired the design for the K2 cookstove. Photo credit: Energant

It’s no secret that the smoke spewing from open fires and from indoor coal-fired cook stoves is a silent killer in the developing world, and a contributor to climate change. More than 4 million people die each year from health problems related to inhaling carbon monoxide or particulate matter released from stoves that burn wood, biomass, or coal, according to the World Health Organization.

Despite a long-running government campaign to eradicate dirty fuels from households, the problem persists in China. But thanks to two young entrepreneurs, a new kind of cook stove—one that can cleanly combust small amounts of plastic trash and convert its excess cooking heat to electricity—could be on its way into kitchens across China.

“Smoke-related illnesses are a bigger issue than malaria or HIV,” said Jacqueline Nguyen, one of the entrepreneurs and a University of California, Berkeley, senior toxicology student. “It kills more than HIV and malaria worldwide per year.”

While Nguyen handles business and marketing for Energant, the company behind the device, her best friend, Mark Webb—a 2011 Berkeley graduate who studied biochemistry—designed the K2 cook stove.

The K2 reduces smoky emissions by 95 percent, according to tests Webb conducted. Using the excess heat created during operations, it can generate enough electricity to trickle charge a mobile phone. It has the ability to burn biomass briquettes cleanly as well.

It can also burn plastic and wood without toxic emissions as long as the material—which emits volatile organic compounds when burned—doesn’t exceed 8 percent of the mass being used as fuel, according to Webb.

The ability to burn plastic and wood cleanly is what distinguishes the K2 model from the KleanCook stove, the product Webb designed last year.

Webb got the idea for the K2 cook stove during pilot testing of the KleanCook model in the Philippines this past summer, when he and Nguyen noticed people cooking food over open fires all across the country—and burning plastic bags as a way to get those fires started.

“We decided to make the K2, which was centered specifically around being able to burn off all of the toxic material from this trash,” Webb said.

K2 cookstove from Energant

The K2 cookstove. Photo credit: Energant

But because the two wanted the cook stoves to generate income for local people who would sell the devices for profit, they decided to target the Chinese market, as business costs in the Philippines were too high.

How does it work, and what differentiates it from other clean cook stoves?

The stove’s built-in fan has a geometric design and resembles the turbo fan of a jet engine. When the fan blows air into the fire, it creates forced convection, which makes the stove more fuel-efficient. Carbon monoxide is then converted to carbon dioxide.

The stove’s greater efficiency means that 50 percent less fuel has to be burned to create the same amount of heat, resulting in lower emissions, according to Webb. A patent is pending on the K2’s design.

The stove also contains a thermoelectric generator. When one side of the device is exposed to heat and the other is kept cool, an electric current is generated as the heat travels from one side of the generator to the other. That electric charge is then fed into a voltage regulator to produce a steady current.

Because it’s made from cheap metal, the stove costs only $16 to manufacture. Energant plans to sell the stoves to regional distributors for $20 to $25. In turn, the salespeople will sell the units at retail for $50—a price that Webb and Nguyen say the Chinese government has deemed an acceptable amount to charge based on disposable income.

The debut of the K2 cook stove could be timely, as recent reports from China indicate there’s been an increase in burning trash and plastic, which releases carcinogenic dioxins.

Webb and Nguyen’s clean cook stove venture attracted support from Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab after the pair won the lab’s “Big Ideas” student innovation contest with the KleanCook stove.

The development lab is one of seven university efforts funded by USAID via the U.S. Global Development Lab. That initiative gives money to seven centers at universities around the country that support students creating solutions to global problems such as climate change, food security, health, and poverty.

“Our whole market approach to the KleanCook was to have the cheapest possible thing that was the most scalable and can deliver electricity for devices,” Webb said.

KleanCook also won prize money from the Clinton Global Initiative University contest this past year, which allowed the entrepreneurs to fund KleanCook’s pilot testing in the Philippines.

Though the K2 cook stove—KleanCook’s more sophisticated sister—appears promising, it isn’t ready for market yet. Webb says Energant has a pre-manufacturing prototype that he’s tested for efficiency using a consumer carbon monoxide sensor that recorded the carbon dioxide output of the stove.

To win the confidence of Chinese consumers, he says K2 needs to be tested using validated equipment—something that Energant would have to pay for specialists to do at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

The company hopes to raise $30,000 from an Indiegogo campaign to pay for the testing.

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How innovative solar is trumping oil in Tanzania

TakePart | May 20, 2014

Mtae Village in Tanzania. Photo by Rod Waddington courtesy Creative Commons.

Mtae Village in Tanzania. Photo by Rod Waddington courtesy Creative Commons.

While nearly 20 percent of people worldwide lack access to electricity, the rate is even higher in the East African nation of Tanzania: 84 percent of the country is off the grid. In the country’s rural areas, access is even sparser.

Sounds like a sweet spot for solar, right? But the up-front costs for a solar panel, battery, and charger are out of reach for the average village resident, not to mention the additional costs of equipment maintenance and repair. Rent-to-own schemes, which require users to pay for their system over time, aren’t practical either, given today’s rapid advancements in technology. So kerosene lamps and diesel fuel generators have remained the default go-to for most.

What if rural Tanzanians could bypass the financial barriers and lease their solar systems instead? What if this enterprise could create local jobs by employing agents to sell electricity services door-to-door?

That’s the business model of Off.Grid:Electric, a start-up founded in 2012 by a trio of American social entrepreneurs.

“We’re the SolarCity of Africa,” said cofounder Erica Mackey. She was originally interested in finding a solution to last-mile rural health care delivery in Tanzania, but switched to energy services after locals told her the lack of access to electricity was the largest obstacle to rural development. “We realized that the biggest barrier to implementing solar on a wide scale was because customers had to assume a lot of risk. So we take on that risk and deliver energy services.”

Off.Grid:Electric customers get a solar panel and metered battery storage and have electrical accessories (such as a charger) installed in their home. They prepay for as much electricity as they want—24 hours of power costs the equivalent of 20 cents a day, or about $6 a month—about what the average Tanzanian household spends on a night’s worth of kerosene for a single lantern. Families might use as many as three lantern loads per night, depending on the circumstances, Mackey says. Solar power can provide 35 times more light—and charge phones. An app enables subscribers to re-up their accounts using their phones.

Affordable electricity provides families with more time for work, study, and leisure activities. And clean electricity offers big health and environmental benefits over kerosene and diesel. Apart from the carbon emissions associated with the fuels, Mackey said that operating a single kerosene lamp indoors for four hours is the equivalent of secondhand smoke from two packs of cigarettes.

By using the “Avon lady” sales model that deploys locals to sell Off.Grid:Electric’s services door-to-door—more than 300 agents are in the field—the company has created jobs that pay three to four times more than what individuals were earning before, Mackey says.

The company operates in three regions of Tanzania and has enrolled more than 70 percent of homes in some villages, according to Mackey. Thanks to a recent $7 million funding round from high-profile investors such as SolarCity, Vulcan Capital, and Omidyar Networks, Off.Grid:Electric plans to move into other parts of the country, anticipating it will have close to 1,000 agents on the ground by the end of the year. It hopes to expand to Uganda and Kenya.

“That’s one of the most exciting things we can do—to make an African rooftop investable for a Western investor,” Mackey said. “That alone puts resources behind a big problem.”

Photo of Mtae village, Tanzania by Rod Waddington courtesy Creative Commons

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One grower’s $17 million quest for a greener tomato

GreenBiz | August 30, 2012

More than 15 years ago, Casey Houweling ventured from his native Canada to start raising his tomatoes in the Southern California sunshine. From Romas to grape tomatoes and tomatoes on the vine, Houweling’s Tomatoes grows a wide range of GMO-free varieties at its outpost in Camarillo, Calif. in addition to its original facility in British Columbia, Canada.

It’s a massive operation. Each year, rows and rows of plants inside the company’s glass-enclosed greenhouses produce over 108 million pounds. Growing the tomatoes hydroponically — without the use of soil — enables Houweling to use less water, yield more on less land and save money. He has also outfitted his greenhouses with solar panels, reuses water and recycles or composts the majority of the company’s waste.

Over the last three years, Houweling has aimed to boost productivity even more — and reduce his environmental impact further — by making a major investment.

He recently unveiled the fruits of that investment: a new 125-acre greenhouse powered by two high-efficient, two-stage turbocharged gas-powered GE Jenbacher J624 engines. The combined heat and power (CHP) system can produce 8.7 megawatts of electrical power — enough to run about 8,800 homes — and goes beyond capturing and reusing heat, as traditional cogeneration systems do.

It also captures CO2 which can then be pumped in to the greenhouse as a fertilizer, as well as water that can be used in facility operations.

As the first commercial CHP greenhouse in the U.S., it’s arguably poised to become the most efficient in the country, and is expected to increase tomato production by 20 percent.

The system makes use of excess low grade heat and water released during production which would normally be wasted, according to GE spokesperson Scott Nolen. And since all of its power output won’t be needed 24 hours a day, Houweling plans to sell the excess power back to the grid.

“From a common sense perspective it seemed like a no-brainer,” Houweling said, reflecting back to his mindset when he first took on the project financed by lease and equity from company profits.

Yet by the time the greenhouse is ready for use, he’ll have spent a total of $17 million — with no idea what his financial return will be.

Certain risk, uncertain reward

Common sense?

As a self-proclaimed risk-taker, Houweling thinks so.

“If we waited for certainty for every decision we make in our facility, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” he said.

“We take a lot more risk than other companies and this has been the biggest risk,” he added, acknowledging that Houweling’s size (with $150 million in annual revenue) lowers the level of risk in comparison to its smaller counterparts.

Houweling said he experienced a defining moment in 2008 after expanding on the final 40 acres needed to build the last in a series of greenhouses at his Camarillo facility.

“I looked at it and said ‘I want it to be completely energy neutral,’” he said. For once, he realized, he wanted to build something that didn’t create any pollution.

How it works

The system’s heat output is stored in up to one million gallons of water that are then available to warm the greenhouses on demand. On top of that, the nitrogen oxide (NOx) produced by the system’s exhaust gas is converted into CO2 and water.

The CO2 is then vented into the greenhouse as fertilizer, while the water — estimated to be about 9,500 gallons a day — will be used in the greenhouse.

According to David Bell, a spokesperson for Houweling’s Tomatoes, most of the NOx — a known air pollutant — is eliminated during the NOx conversion to water and CO2.

“Although a portion of the CO2 will be absorbed by the tomatoes, it is not expected that the tomatoes would absorb the air toxics from the cogeneration units,” Bell said.

In contrast to the 5 parts per million by volume (ppmv) emitted by the new CHP system, greenhouses at Houweling’s Tomatoes that are heated by boilers are permitted to emit up to 40 ppmv NOx, he said.

Improvements aside, Houweling said getting the system online has presented many challenges, namely because he is the first to operate a U.S. facility using the Jenbacher J624. The other Jenbacher J624 engines operated as part of a CHP system are installed in greenhouses across the world.

Houweling reports spending $10 million in equipment and $7 million in infrastructure costs. That includes getting the facility ready for permitting and establishing interconnecting power between the greenhouse to the grid managed by Southern California Edison, the regional electric utility.

The biggest challenge was getting the green light to sell power back to the grid.

While the application to interconnect power and the facility permits have been approved, Houweling said the system has been delayed from going online due to the lack of a full-capacity power purchase agreement from California’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator.

Though the facility is equipped to generate 8.7 MW — with an additional 4.4 MW in capacity anticipated to come online in the future — it’s currently allowed to sell just 2 MW.

In Houweling’s opinion, the hurdles stem from “the way the American electrical power distribution is set up — having a big centralized power generating station and distributing power to where the demand is,” he said. “What we’re doing is producing the power where the demand is.

“There’s hundreds of documents you have to sign and read through — just to sell your electricity to the grid,” he said. “You can’t estimate the time or cost it takes to build it.”

What delays could cost

As a result, Houweling expects he won’t be able to take the system online until Jan. 1, 2013 — four months later than he initially planned.

And he still isn’t even completely sure he’ll be able to fire up the facility in early 2013. “We could be sitting idle for another year after this –- costing us $15,000 a day,” he said.

Houweling says if he knew three years ago what he knows now, he’s not sure if he would do it again.

Still, interested parties did make the trek out West to see the Jenbacher J624 in action. “There were people from the East Coast here mostly from utilities, someone from Alaska that was interested in doing something, and other industry people,” he said.

But based on what Houweling’s Tomatoes, GE and California government agencies learned from the experience, Houweling said, companies interested in investing in the equipment and getting it online in the U.S. will have others to draw upon for advice.

If not for all the logistical and bureaucratic hurdles, Houweling is convinced many more growers in the U.S. would be adopting the system.

But the path to getting a CHP system up and running might be less bumpy in the future, thanks to a directive issued just this morning from the White House. The Executive Order aims to increase the amount of CHP-generated industrial power in the U.S. by 40 GW by the end of 2020. Assistance will take the form of technical guidance, financial incentives and assistance to states.

California is perhaps one of the best-positioned to receive that help. The state is working towards a goal of boosting the amount of power produced by CHP facilities by 6500 MW — also by 2020.

And while it’s definitely “uncharted territory” in Canada, Houweling says — GE operates one Jenbacher J624 in Ontario and it’s primarily a standby facility — since the government manages and owns the electrical distribution, he expects fewer hurdles to overcome than in the U.S.

Lessons learned

Companies interested in installing the technology should “be prepared at how difficult this is going to be,” Houweling said. “Go into it knowing you can’t set the timeline and you don’t know the cost.”

Houweling acknowledges that these two factors make it difficult to finance such a project.

In addition to GE, Houweling recommends Western Energy Systems, GE’s distributor and installer for the cogeneration technology that works alongside its Jenbacher J264 engines, as a resource throughout the process.

“I would use them on lean on them and be much more diligent to be very sure that you have all questions answered,” he said. “Give a lot of time,” he added.

Companies should allow 15-18 months to go through the process before the equipment arrives on site, Houweling said.

While Houweling’s Tomatoes is the only company in the U.S. that is using the Jenbacher J624 as part of a commercial operation, GE’s Nolen is optimistic.

“This is an early gate launch of the project,” he said. “ We’re really hopeful. Market research people want to see it work in the U.S. first, as they’re risk averse.”

In the meantime, Nolen says that GE is working on an even more efficient engine as a followup to the Jenbacher J624, which at 46 percent efficiency runs as the highest in its class. “We’re pushing to get to 50 percent,” he said. “But this doesn’t happen overnight.”

Photo of Casey Houweling in company greenhouse courtesy of Houweling’s Tomatoes

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Cities 2.0 prep for growth through open data, tech

GreenBiz | July 19, 2012 | Original headline: How city-level innovation is creating business opportunities

If you want to visit the future, go to Philadelphia.

The city of brotherly love has published more than 100 datasets since April, when Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order requiring city branches to release their once-buried information through an online portal accessible to anyone. The site includes data from nonprofits, universities and businesses, as well as municipal data from maps of enterprise zones to a searchable database of childcare providers.

“Helping government become an enabler and a platform for innovation” is what his job is all about, Adel Ebeid, Philadelphia’s first Chief Innovation Officer, told attendees at the GreenBiz Cities 2.0 webcast on Wednesday.

The intersection between local governments, big data and innovation was the key theme of “Leveraging City Investments in Technologies,” part one in the three-part series of presentations.

As urbanization accelerates, cities are poised to play a crucial role in fostering innovation, even as their swelling populations and sometimes-creaky infrastructure create a massive business opportunity for the corporate sector, webcast speakers said.

The world will undergo a huge demographic shift over the next four decades, said Eric Woods, a director of Pike Research, a global market research and consulting firm focused on cleantech. Currently, a little more than half the global population lives in urban areas. By 2050, the share of the world’s population that’s urbanized will rise to 70 percent, with the fastest urban growth taking place in Asia, he said.

“We’re going to be adding around a million people a week to the urban population for the next 40 years,” he said.

As a result, new market opportunities are blooming. According to Woods, more than $100 billion will be spent on “innovative infocentric technology” worldwide over the next 10 years. By 2020, almost $16 billion will be spent annually on that core technology.

Plus, cities of the future will need to provide infrastructure and services on a larger scale than ever before, he said.

That includes working with companies and citizens to harness data, lowering operating costs and delivering needed services as efficiently as possible.

“Cities have become a learning laboratory of innovation and new kinds of capabilities,” said GreenBiz chairman and webcast moderator Joel Makower.

Makower cited a report published by GreenBiz Group and London-based SustainAbility earlier this year focusing on how cities are “vital to the future of sustainability.” Turns out, the report concluded, that sustainability needs cities just as much as cities need sustainability.

How, then, can cities leverage their investments in technologies to provide the greatest benefit possible? And what are the opportunities for business to partner with cities in pursuit of a more sustainable future?

Leveraging technology upgrades

There’s an easy answer to the question of what a city can do first for the most effect with the least cost, according to Jim Anderson, vice president of Schneider Electric and head of its U.S. Smart Cities program.

Upgrading buildings is the low hanging fruit for cities, he said: “Many are not upgraded or updated over the years, so it becomes a big energy user and can be upgraded at not really any cost to cities.”

Water use efficiency and transportation should be the next targets. “A lot of water is lost from leaks and old pipes and old systems out there that probably in many cases goes unnoticed,” he said.

Mobility from a traffic and congestion standpoint should also be attended to, Anderson said, along with improved traffic management. For example, new sensors available in the marketplace can help address traffic flows through real-time data.

“There are some new and evolving business models evolving around traffic and traffic congestion involving tolling,” he said.

“[There’s] huge cost savings about understanding the benefit you can get from improved competition, growth of innovation and the decrease of congestion,” said Helen Honisett, director of emerging solutions ecosystems at Cisco. “It costs cities to have people sitting in cars.”

Financing Cities 2.0

A key issue is “how we finance the technology innovation that we need,” said Woods of Pike Research. “There’s going to be increasing focus on looking at new business models, new ways of financing operations in cities and new types of partnerships.”

Anderson used as an example his company’s Smart Cities division, which works with cities to devise efficient strategies across six domains: energy, mobility, water, public services, buildings and homes and smart integration.

When U.S. Smart Cities does performance contracting for government buildings, it conducts an energy efficiency assessment in those buildings and installs upgrades.

Costs are paid for up front from a third-party financial institution based on the expected energy savings after the upgrades are complete. This poses virtually no risk from the city’s end, Anderson said.

“It’s a way cities can upgrade their infrastructure, upgrade their faciilties without any taxpayer issues or having to come up with any up-front money to fund that,” he said. “And those savings are guaranteed by Schneider.”

Driving the conversation

Since most cities don’t have chief innovation officers, who drives the conversation between companies and cities when it comes to these initiatives? And are cities starting to work together in their efforts as well?

It can start within city departments, such as a city’s office of sustainability, and eventually get to the mayor’s office, but it all depends on the city, said Ebeid of Philadelphia.

He participates in a working group made up of seven U.S. cities’ Chief Innovation Officers. Calling themselves the G7, the group shares experiences as a way to learn from each other.

The same dynamic is taking place in Europe, Honisett observed. One difference she’s noticed is that there’s been a shift where cities are less competitive. Now, they’re willing to share with each other and partake in discussions regarding how to move from one stage to the next, she said.

Cisco runs a Smart+Connected Communities initiative aimed at economic, social and environmental sustainability.

“One of the things that Cisco that works with cities on is to understand the benefits around technologies,” said Honisett. “We see huge amounts of cost savings that can be made within cities by using technology.”

The case of Philadelphia: Cities 2.0 on the ground

In Philadelphia, Ebeid said he wants to reenergize city residents to see themselves as innovators working not just on one project here and there, but to set up frameworks for sustainability.

In the next few weeks, Ebeid said the city will designate a chief data officer to oversee its open data effort — which, to be sure, came a couple of years after San Francisco made a similar open-data move, but which has made great strides.

Since 2010, the city’s Greenworks program has published an annual report which tracks 160 metrics across goals in energy, environment, equity, economy, and engagement. Greenworks is a project of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.

One data set that the city will be delving in the next year or two, Ebeid said, is residents’ requests for non-emergency services – something almost every city has.

“We’d like to mine that data and visualize the community chatter and try to put into perhaps what the next conversation is going to be about. That is what will set us apart from traditional mining of datasets,” he said.

In addition to working with the tech and startup community through hackathons and meetups, Ebeid’s office is starting to engage with the 83 higher education institutions in the area – the second-highest number of local collegiate institutions in the country.

“In many cases, that’s perhaps an underleveraged asset,” he said.

Ebeid said he’d like the partnerships to be focused on business incubation and scaling.

“Universities certainly have the wherewithal to scale it quickly so that we can respond to almost any situation,” Ebeid said.

Photo of Philadelphia night skyline by Thesab/Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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