The 2007 Award Ceremony for the California Clean Tech Open were held today in San Francisco. The event was held in the Palace of Fine Arts Theater. It started with an exhibit area where each of the finalist team had an opportunity to present their companies to anyone attending the event. Attendees included press, investors, and various other industry affiliates. We had a poster set up with a flier hand out explaining our product and business proposition. We talked to quite a few different people from a wide variety of backgrounds. This reminded me of a trade show that was open to the public. You just never know who your talking to at any given time, and any contact could provide you with an important connecton, so you have to take them all seriously. This lasted from 4:30 - 5:30 PM.

The main program ran from 5:30 - 6:30 PM. It was kicked off by Marc Gotthschalk (left), one of the founders of the CCTO. He was followed by a series of speakers including David Rodgers (top right), Deputy Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency, Department of Energy; Jeff Byron (bottom right), Commissioner, California Energy Commission; Noah Horowitz, Senior Scientist, National Resource Defense Council; and Tim Woodward, Managing Director, Nth Power. David Rodgers announced that the DoE had decided to provide each of the winners an expense paid trip to Washington, D. C. to pith their plans to the commercialization group at the DoE. Jeff Byron of the CEC pointed out that California, as a nation state, would be second only to the U. S. as a whole in the consumption of gas. Noah Horowitz of the NRDC pointed out that the current climate crisis has developed environmental heroes in unexpected places, noting that WalMart is responsible for selling over 100 million Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs).

Next in the program were the awards. This section started with the presentation of a CCTO Alumni Award, for the most successful companies from last year’s competition. The award was presented by Rebeca Hwang, Judging Chair for the CCTO. The runner-up is EDC Technologies, last year’s winner in Smart Power and the winner is GreenVolts, last year’s winner for Renewables which recently closed $10M in funding. This year’s winners are as follows:

Smart Power

Winner: Lucid Design Group - Real-time information feedback drives energy conservation
Runner-up: Federspiel Controls - Wireless supervisory control of HVAC systems
Sponsor: AMD
Presenter: Larry Vertal, AMD

Energy Efficiency

Winner: NiLA, Inc. - LED stage set lighting for the entertainment industry
Runner-up: Ahwahnee Technology - Advanced area lighting, disruptive alternative to LEDs and fluorescents
Sponsors: PGE, SDGE, SCE
Presenter: Sharareh Moaddeli, SDGE

Renewables

Winner: 1-Solar - Low-priced long-life inverters for solar PV
Runner-up: Tahoe Water Systems - Self-contained solar/wind based water
Sponsors: PGE, SDGE, SCE
Presenter: Todd Strauss, PGE

Green Building

Winner: BuildFast - House kit for low-income and post-disaster housing
Runner-up: Enverity Corporation - Environmental data management software
Sponsor: Google
Presenter: Bill Weihl, Google

Transportation

Winner: Syncromatics - Automated vehicle location for transit line efficiency
Runner-up: Hum Cycles - High performance electric sport motorcycles
Sponsor: Lexus
Presenter: Kimberly Gardiner, Lexus

Air, Water & Waste

Winner: Microvi Biotech - Waste-free water treatment technologies
Runner-up: EarthGuard - Environmentally friendly plastic packaging
Sponsor: ENVIRON Foundations and Grundfos
Presenters: Alfan DeLorne, ENVIRON Foundation & Poul Doft Fredriksen, Grundfos

Thanks to all the volunteers at the California Clean Tech Open. It was a great experience!

For additional coverage, check out the California Clean Tech Open site and Green Wombat.

CLEAN TECH AWARDS EVENT GALA!
Monday, October 29 - Evening

Anyone. Everyone. Clean Tech Professionals. Curious Minds.
Tackle Global Warming. Great Food. Awards Presentations.

SPEAKERS
Brad Barton, Director of Commercialization, U.S. Department of Energy
Jeff Byron, Commissioner, California Energy Commission
Noah D Horowitz, Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council
Tim Woodward, Managing Director, Nth Power

An organic buffet dinner and wine will be served by Living Room Events.

Please register early - Event Details

I purchased more CFL bulbs. This time I got a 6-pack of Feit Electric 15W R30 Reflector bulbs (model CE15R30/6) to replace more of the 65W in my kitchen and a couple other locations. I’m pretty happy with these bulbs. They come on much brighter than the DuraBright I tried before, and these bulbs also claim to contain less mercury, lead and other hazardous materials compared to other CFLs. They exceed the European Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) standards fro mercury levels. Even the box is recyclable.

A few months ago I finally got around to trying out some compact fluorescent lights. The delay was due in part to the lighting situation in my house. I don’t have many of the 40-100W traditional (A-shape) bulbs. The main lighting I use are the reflector (flood) lights in the recessed cannisters in the kitchen and a 3-way bulb in the bedroom. I finally got around to trying our replacements for both, picking them up at Orchard Hardware Supply.

In the bedroom I had a 3-way (50-75-100 Watt) incandescent bulb which I replaced with a DuraBright Compact Fluorescent Springlamp 3-way (14-19-32 Watt) which is supposed to be equivalent to a 40-75-150 Watt incandescent. It is ENERGY STAR certified. I’m quite happy with this change. The new CFL comes on pretty fast, and overall has brighter, whiter light. The only problem is that I can not reattach the lamp shade since the CFL is much bigger. For some reason, the included harp extender did not work. I don’t really care though since I didn’t use the lamp shade before either. This way I can use the lowest setting and still have enough light for most of my needs.

In the kitchen I have 65 Watt R30 recessed flood lamps. For these I picked up a 14 Watt Medium DuraBright Flood Lamp, which is their R30 equivalent. I only got one and tested it in the single cannister over the sink. I was very disappointed when I turned it on. The light was so dim, I could not understand how they could claim it is equivalent to my old 65W bulb. I tried turning it on and off, then put back the old bulb to make sure it was as bright as I thought. I then tried the CFL in one of the 5 cannisters over the center of the kitchen. Still no luck. While I was distracted elsewhere, the light eventually warmed up, and was now as bright as any of the incandescents. I thought they didn’t need this much time to warm up any more. I would say it takes a good 2 minutes to achieve full brightness, and is totally unusable for the first minute or more. I put it back over the sink, but I have not replaced the other bulbs yet. After further investigation it seems this is a common issue with CFLs designed for recessed cannisters. Apparently to handle the higher heat produced in the enclosed cannister, a slower phosphor element is used. I guess this is something I can live with, so I should change out the rest of the bulbs sometime.

I need to look around at the rest of the lights in my house just to make sure I’m using the most efficient lighting I can. Maybe the LED based bulbs will really hit the mass market soon. I’ll be keeping track on the one billion bulbs website. I’ve sponsored a group there, so you can see what I’ve done or join my group by going here, or look for the one billion bulbs banner on the right hand bar.

This morning I attended TechNet’s Annual Innovation Summit at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. TechNet is a bipartisan, political network of CEOs and Senior Executives that promotes the growth of technology and the innovation economy. The summit is co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. It consisted of two discussion panels hosted by Charlie Rose. It was free for the Cal community, which includes me by proxy through the business incubator.

The event started with an introduction by Professor Paul Wright, Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). He breifly discussed the history of innovation as related to energy at UC Berkeley and in California at large. He was followed by Lezlee Westine, President and CEO of TechNet. Lezlee introduced the panels.

The first panel was titled Charting a National Innovation Policy for the Next Decade. The panelists included John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco; John Chen, Chairman, President and CEO of Sybase; and Laura Tyson, Professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The panel focus was on the US Innovation Economy, that is, the US economic dominance based on innovation and technology, and how it can be maintained. Some of the discussion revolved around some of the current barriers to continued innovation. One of the main contributors, as pointed out by Professor Tyson, is the poor quality of the education system, especially K-12. Another problem under discussion was immigration, but not the usual how to keep immigrants out, but rather how do we retain the best and the brightest, especially those trained at US graduate schools (which still rank highest in the world). John Chen addressed the immigration issue though his own experience as an immigrant from Hong Kong. Government investment, or lack there-of, was another concern. While many of the recent technology booms: computing, the Internet, etc., were funded by the Department of Defense, DoD spending has become narrowly focused on the military and security. It seems other departments need to pick up the slack. John Chambers believes the US can once again achieve productivity growth of 3-5% as in the late 1990’s rather than the typical 2-3%. He believes like the Internet in the 1990’s, broadband interaction will drive this new productivity spike in the next five years. Of course he also happens to be Chairman and CEO of one of the largest broadband infrastructure suppliers, Cisco Systems, so he may be a bit biased.

The second panel was titled Green Technologies: Driving Sustainable Global Growth. The panelists included John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President of Sun Microsystems; John Melo, Chief Executive Officer of Amyris; and Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org. Dr. Brilliant (great name!) discussed some of the green philanthropic projects being sponsored by Google such as their solar and plug-in hybrid projects. He envisions a day in the near future where end customers will be able to make dynamic choices between “black” and “green” power. Jonathan Schwartz talked about Sun’s advances in reducing power for data centers, which account for some 5% of the nations energy use. He suggested that we need more policy requiring energy and emissions monitoring as well as defining Energy Star type requirements for data centers. John Melo described Amyris’ foray into synthetic biology. They are developing a modified microbe that can turn sugar into diesel. He claims it is much more sustainable than corn ethanol, and that the current administrations’ policy encouraging corn ethanol is flawed. John Doerr mentioned that there are huge opportunities in sustainable energy and that the US needs to step up and lead the world in this area. When asked what he thinks is the primary reason why the US is not currently taking the lead, he said it’s because of “500 votes in Florida.” I guess there’s little question who he voted for in 2000.

I’m really glad I got the opportunity to attend the summit. It was great to see some of the top executives stand up and say what needs to be done to get this country on track with innovation and green technologies. Hopefully their broad reach through their organizations will really start to make a difference. Only time will tell, but hopefully not too much time…

We just finished up our final presentation for the CCTO about an hour ago. I think the presentation went well. Nate did a great job. There were 5 or 6 judges for the pitch. They seemed pretty impressed with the delivery, but I’m not sure they bought into the product concept. One of the problems you run into when pitching a home product to investors is that they can easily view themselves as the customers. In our case this was a bit of a disadvantage. Some of the judges have very high-end home automation systems so they see our solution as more low end, like something you would find at Home Depot. But our pricing strategy is not meant for the low end. It is targeted more at the middle to high end. Many of the judges seemed to think we either had to go for the extreme high-end or the commodity pricing.

Anyway, I think the pitch went well and we said everything we wanted to say. Unfortunately I don’t think the audience was completely receptive to our story, so I don’t think we’ll be winning this competition. We definitely got a lot out of participating in the CCTO, so definitely no regrets. Now we have to start moving forward with the plan regardless of the outcome of the CCTO. We’ll find out those results on October 29 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. The awards event is open to all, you can go to the CCTO site to register. I think we’ll have an opportunity to present our plan there in exhibit sessions.