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Green Light Distrikt
Green Light Distrikt is about entrepreneurship focused on the cleantech sector. Edited by Chris Williams with frequent guest posts from friends, experts and industry insiders from clusters across the globe. Our goal is to provide a place where cleantech entrepreneurs in various clusters across the globe can learn from one another. Green Light Distrikt is creating the "Hitchikers Guide to Clentech" to provide a resource for cleantech entrepreneurs. Read more
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Tag Archives: solar
April 13th, 2011
Surfin’ Solar | How to Deal When the VCs Leave
BOSTON -
I worked for Wakonda Technologies for a couple years and I am often asked what happened to the company. Why did we go under? In short, we had a great idea, an amazing team, and a few years to make a solar cell. We missed some milestones and our investor group fell like a row of dominos that was shaken by a fart. But that story is no fun to tell at the bar—it’s a bland piece of gum at this point, so I stopped chewing it.
The real flavor is in how I managed through these changes, and how it affected my view of entrepreneurship in cleantech. I know a lot of people are going through similar things, so I hope I can help with this short story. Since I’ve surfed new England for about as long as I have been working in solar, it’s only appropriate I tell it in metaphor with the sport I confided in when times were toughest.
Tagged cleantech, solar, Wakonda Technologies
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March 30th, 2011
Themes from the Greentech Media Solar Summit: LCOE, Reliability, Scalability, and Utility Interoperability
TOPICS: CleanTech Events
Greentech Media’s Solar Summit, held March 14 and 15 in Palm Springs, CA, was not your average solar industry event. With attendance coming in around 275 and mostly drawing higher-level management and executives, participants were expected to have a high level of industry expertise. Instead, discussions delved deep on very high-level topics; from diversification of PV product lines by market sector to increased need for inverters to respond to utility needs to the effects of regulatory bottlenecks on project finance and investor confidence. Several sessions were specifically devoted to covering challenges and innovations in product manufacturing as well; from innovations in fully-automated manufacturing to analyzing competitiveness across several thin-film technologies. Continue Reading >
Tagged greentech media, LCOE, solar
March 25th, 2011
Reflections on Then and Now: Growing up in the Growing Solar Industry from East to West Coast
TOPICS: Solar
I got my humble start in solar in the Northeast as a student in the early 2000’s interested in sustainability and self-sufficient living. My original goal was to learn about these topics enough so I could go back to the land, too, and continue my work as a renewable energy and sustainability advocate.
Instead, my fortune changed in a very unexpected way.
In the Beginning
I was a product of the tie-dye t-shirt and sandals days of solar; when what mattered was that you were a True Believer In The Cause. I spent a lot of time reading Home Power Magazine, volunteering at sustainability-related events, and bending the ears of the old guard environmentalists who were among the minuscule percentage of people to live off the grid with solar. In the late 1990’s in the Northeast: this was about as close as you could get to solar without going back to the land yourself.
Tagged green jobs, solar, Sustainability
February 16th, 2011
Does Jeff Lyng’s Rise in ASES Suggest Turnover to Young Solar Leadership?
TOPICS: Solar
The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) has named Jeff Lyng the new chairman of the board. Normally, this would not be breaking news in my world except that he does not look the part of the leadership traditionally reflected of other executives in the solar industry. In fact, his appearance marks a possibly exciting turn.
He’s young. Continue Reading >
January 19th, 2011
In the Energy Wars, We All (Can) Win
TOPICS: BOSTON, CleanTech Kingpins
There’s been a lot of freaking out lately about China and energy – although Europe is still far ahead of us here in North America. We can spend time freaking out or we can address the elephant in the room, how do we get OUR ducks in a row. We’ve made some serious progress in both technology development and deployment in the last 5 years, but there’s still a long way to go.
On September 30th, Green Light Distrikt held our 3rd Cleantech Kingpins speaker series. We asked a series of speakers with various backgrounds – private industry, non-profit, research, government, and media – to address the question: “Where are we and how do we increase US investment in cleantech?”
Steve Minnihan, a cleantech research associate at Lux Research had some very interesting information and conclusions based on his research on the solar, smart grid, and transportation space. (See Steve’s full 12 minute presentation and slides at the bottom of the post)
Tagged china, energy, lux research, smart grid, solar, steve minnihan, wind
September 22nd, 2010
Who Cares About Flexible Solar?
BOSTON -One contract I’m working on wanted me to develop “flexible” solar panels. When I asked 
what qualities are important to the project, none of them included mechanical flexibility. In finding a design solution for this customer, I learned that flexibility is an attribute people like the thought of, but may not really need.
Flexible solar panels are like the toy at the bottom of a cereal box. I get excited about the thought of playing with them. I imagine bending, rolling and unrolling them, showing them to my friends, or even throwing them over my shoulder like a cape and running around while I power batteries. The opportunities are truly limitless.
But then I look at the price and decide to reach for the generic brand corn flakes solar panel. There is no toy in this box. In fact, there isn’t even a box. It’s just cheap, sometimes energy dense, and usually made in China. Dreams smashed.
Why was I attracted to the flexible panel in the first place?
In all of my encounters in the solar business, the metrics that matter for a solar panel are:
- Cost—cost of the panel, out of pocket expense?
- Weight—how portable is it? How easy is it to install?
- Durability—how rugged is it in the field? Can I attach it to a jack-hammer?
- Lifetime—what’s the payback period? NPV? IRR?
- Efficiency—coupled with cost & area to get cost/watt
Tagged bipv, first solar, global solar, kyocera, nanosolar, research and development, sharp, solar, unisolar
June 25th, 2010
A Slight Miscalculation…No Solar in Abu Dhabi? Learnings from Being First Movers in Cleantech
TOPICS: BOSTON, Renewable Energy
A funny thing was recently discovered in the middle east. The folks planning Masdar, the zero-carbon, zer0-waste and (supposedly) 100% renewable energy (proposed) city just outside Abu Dhabi did a little calculation on the solar resource they could expect in the area. All along they had figured to develop large solar arrays just outside the city to power everything. Wind was taken off the table earlier in the planning of the city as there really isn’t much of a wind resource in the area.
But solar. Now we KNOW there’s a great solar resource in the UAE, right? The country where nobody goes outside because it’s too hot, where people leave their AC and cold water running while they’re gone on vacation so the house is livable when they return, and the country that doesn’t really even HAVE sidewalks because, well, it’s too damn hot to walk anywhere.
Their calculations regarding the solar resource in the area apparently didn’t even happen because it was so obvious. They must have just estimated… Because, now, a few years into the plan? It appears the initial ‘calculation’ was off by, oh, about double. That’s right. Apparently there are sandstorms (shocker) and a consistent haze from the UAE’s proximity to the Persian Gulf. These two factors dramatically cut the available solar resource in the UAE to about half of what could be expected in other similar latitudes.
Why does this matter. Well, for one it puts a damper on the solar dreams of Masdar. But, if we take a step back, it dramatically illustrates a common problem in the renewable energy industry. So many projects throw money around, make plans, and shoot for the stars without ever really doing their due diligence.
Here’s a comparison. Cape Wind was doing something no one had ever done in the USA. They had to forge ahead blind in some regards because the permitting structure and financing partners didn’t exist when they started the project back in 2001. Now they’ve spent 40+ million dollars and it’s still not done. While I don’t necessarily agree with the public outreach and incorporation methods of the Cape Wind project, its an example of a project that was in a position to fly blind and not feel dumb if something came out of left field (like Indian burial grounds 5 miles out to sea) because it was, for many intensive purposes, a first.
Now let’s take Masdar. There’s an iphone app for sun-eye for crying out loud! Not to say that’s the technology to use in this case, but solar resource is NOT a hard thing to quantify. Had no one built a solar project (even on a house) in the UAE that could have spoken up and said, “Gee, this is producing a lot less energy than I thought it would…?”
Simple. That’s what a lot of this industry is. And yet we see time and time again people missing the trees for the forest.
Tagged first wind, haze solar, Masdar, Miscalculation, pv, Sandstorm solar, solar, Solar Power, UAE
