Where the Jobs Are (WSJ)

Friday, April 15, 2011

APRIL 15, 2011
Mobile App Talent Pool Is Shallow
Companies Scramble for Engineers Who Can Write Software for Smartphones

By JOE LIGHT

This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team. And Web start-up Where Inc. is on track to double its mobile staff this year after quadrupling it in 2010.

The problem: The talent pool isn't growing nearly that fast.

Mobile applications have boomed. Above, an attendee at the International CTIA Wireless conference last month tested a Galaxy Tab.
."The demand is constant," said Dan Gilmartin, Where's vice president of marketing. "Every company is looking for these people."
The intense competition for mobile engineers, which affects large companies and fast-growing start-ups alike, is emerging as a key bottleneck as companies scramble to capitalize on the fast growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Mobile applications have boomed, working their way deeply into fields like retail, media, videogames and marketing. Market research firm Gartner Inc. expects revenue from Apple Inc.'s App Store, Google Inc.'s Android Market and other stores where mobile applications are sold to nearly triple to $15 billion this year.

The technologies are so new— Apple's app store launched in 2008 —that few software engineers have mobile development experience, which requires new coding skills compared to a desktop computer.

That's forcing companies to increase wages, retrain software engineers, outsource work to third-party developers and set up offshore development labs to meet demand.

In the last year, the number of online job listings with the keyword "iPhone" in the text has nearly tripled, while the number with "Android" has more than quadrupled, according to listings search engine Indeed Inc.

.The number of mobile development jobs offered on Elance.com, a freelancer website, doubled between the first quarters of last year and this year, twice as fast as growth on the site as a whole.

"Almost all of our companies are looking for Android and iPhone developers," said Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, a Boston venture capital firm, whose portfolio includes Twitter Inc., Tumblr and OnSwipe.

Ning, a Silicon Valley start-up, plans to almost double its mobile development staff to 17 to work on a hybrid instant-message and social network it launched in February, said Chief Executive Jason Rosenthal.

To attract developers around the country, the 95-person company has run recruitment drives on more than a dozen college campuses and it also holds technology seminars that are open to the public.

If a software engineer doesn't have mobile experience, the company has sometimes been willing to spend several weeks training the engineer to work on mobile platforms, Mr. Rosenthal said.

Given the mismatch between supply and demand, many companies say they have no choice but to retrain software engineers in the art of mobile development. In the last year, Major League Baseball's Internet company MLB.com nearly doubled the number of mobile engineers it has to 19, said MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman.

"If we can find an excellent engineer, we hire him," said Mr. Bowman. "You can't always wait for mobile experience, because you might be waiting a long time."

The mismatch has put upward pressure on wages. According to an October survey by tech job board Dice.com, about 31% of companies reported that average pay among mobile software designers and engineers increased at a higher rate than normal, mostly because of heightening competition for talent.

The Dice survey said the average mobile salary last fall was about $76,000, but several companies said they pay experienced mobile developers anywhere from $90,000 to $150,000 a year.

Hearst Magazines launched an "app lab" this past September to coordinate mobile development across publications. In the last two months, the company hired two mobile developers, bringing its Web and mobile development staff to 15, said Debra Robinson, the company's chief information officer.

Ms. Robinson said competition for developers has forced the company to pay mobile engineers with little experience the same salaries as it would pay engineers with as many as 10 years of experience. In the next year, she expects the company to add another five or six developers.

"There was not much competition when we started, but that's changed now," said Ms. Robinson, adding that the company now has to compete against high-tech companies like Google Inc. talent.

Other start-ups are investing heavily in offshore development. Last summer, Boston-based Where, which runs a mobile ad network and location-based recommendation service, opened a development center in Croatia to supplement its 18-person U.S. mobile engineering staff. The center now employs seven mobile engineers.

That should make it easier to meet Where's 2011 goal of doubling its mobile development team to 60 people, said Where's Mr. Gilmartin. The Croatian employees are paid more than Croatians at other local companies, but less than their U.S. counterparts.

Outsourcing some mobile development work has emerged as another strategy for addressing the shortage. That's been a boon for software development agencies such as 360mind and Pivotal Labs, which has done work for Twitter and Groupon Inc. The staff at 360mind, a 20-person mobile development shop, doubled last year, and is likely to double again this year, said CEO Nick Dalton.

After struggling to recruit Android developers, location-based social network start-up Gowalla Inc. hired Pivotal Labs to build its Android client. Gowalla also farmed out development for its Windows 7 app.

Scott Raymond, Gowalla's chief technology officer, said working with contractors takes more time and involvement but is necessary in today's speedy app market.

"It just takes a really long time to find people to hire internally and we need to move fast," he said.

Write to Joe Light at Joe.Light@wsj.com

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Smart Grid Technology (Business Week)

Smart Grid Technology October 5, 2009, 8:18PM EST The Coming Energy Revolution
Smart-grid technology will bring huge savings to companies as varied as Cisco, PG&E, and Cargill, and to consumers, too. But who will foot the bill?
By Rachael King

Food producer Cargill is taking a carving knife to its electricity bills. At a plant in Springdale, Ark., where the company handles about 50,000 turkeys a day, electricity bills run more than $2 million a year. But Cargill thinks it can cleave $680,000 from the total by using its own generators on high-demand days.

The secret behind this money-saving plan lies in what's known as the smart grid—a wholesale revamp of the system that distributes energy to homes and businesses around the country. Government bodies and utility providers are in the early stages of this multibillion-dollar upgrade to transform the existing grid into a two-way network where power and information flow in both directions between the utility and the customer, not just from the provider to the user.

Done right, the revamp will cut bills, reduce consumption, give users more say in the kinds of energy they use, and even let customers produce their own energy and sell it back to power providers. "What's going to happen with the smart grid is that we're going to create a network that's larger than the Internet," says Guido Jouret, chief technology officer for the emerging-technologies group at Cisco Systems (CSCO), one of the many companies working on the technology needed to modernize the electric grid.

A $20 Billion Market in Five Years
The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research and design group, estimates that it will cost $165 billion, or roughly $8 billion a year for 20 years, to create the smart grid. The market for the gear needed to overhaul smart-grid communications alone may reach $20 billion a year in five years, Cisco estimates. Other technology companies developing smart-grid software and hardware include IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), Google (GOOG), and Siemens (SI).

The tech sector's interest is fitting considering the similarities between the energy-grid upgrade and the computing revolution of the 1980s that saw hulking, centralized mainframes give way to PCs. The existing U.S. power grid dispenses electricity but is limited in its ability to gather intelligence from end users—hence the monthly visit from a meter reader. Now utilities are replacing outmoded meters with so-called smart meters that foster a back-and-forth between customer and utility. In much the same way PCs opened the door to third-party software and services and use of the Internet, smart meters are paving the way for tools and services that make the system more responsive to shifts in energy demands.

Cargill is counting on smart-grid tech to lower its bills. Many utility vendors set rates for industrial customers based on peak-use patterns. So in a common practice known as peak-shaving, Cargill taps its own generators to keep its 365,000-square-foot Springdale plant cool on summer's hottest days rather than use energy from its electricity vendor, PowerSecure (POWR). The challenge is determining when peaks occur. PowerSecure keeps close tabs on Cargill's generators, as well as fluctuating electricity prices, and when it can tell that rates are on course to pass certain preset thresholds, it fires up Cargill's generators remotely.

Easier to Opt for Solar or Wind
In the future, Cargill may choose to run its generators more often and sell power back to the utility when prices are high, says PowerSecure CEO Sidney Hinton. While Cargill's utility provider doesn't currently purchase energy generated by customers, other utilities, including PG&E (PCG) in California, have begun buying solar energy generated by customers on corporate campuses and residential rooftops.

Another benefit is that customers may soon get more leeway in determining the nature of the power they purchase, more easily opting for renewable energies such as solar and wind, says Matthew Trevithick, a partner at venture capital firm Venrock. Companies that are actively trying to cut their carbon footprints, such as Coca-Cola (KO), may be able to specify the percentage of renewable energy they buy, opting to pay more for wind, for example, if it helps them meet go-green targets.

But questions abound over who will foot the bill for the grid's modernization. The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act has allocated $4.5 billion in grants and loans through the Energy Dept. for the smart grid to enhance security and to ensure reliability of the electric grid to meet growing demand.

What of the remaining costs? Often, capital improvement expenses are passed along to customers. Before that, though, utilities need a green light from state regulators. "Certain states will go first because of cost," says David Leeds, an analyst specializing in the smart grid for Greentech Media. For instance, he says that in California, electricity costs 15¢ per kilowatt hour, compared with about 5¢ in Georgia.

Discounts for Lower Peak Usage
California utilities are leading the way in smart-meter installation. Northern California's PG&E is the leader, spending $2.2 billion to deploy 5.4 million smart meters, according to a Greentech Media report. Southern California Edison is No. 3, spending $1.63 billion on 4.8 million smart meters. (Columbus (Ohio)-based American Electric Power (AEP), with a goal of installing 5 million meters, lands between the two California utilities.)

Utilities stand to benefit from smarter-grid technology, too—particularly during high-demand periods. When demand for electricity exceeds supply, such as on hot summer days when air conditioners are running, utilities must find additional power or potentially face blackouts. Some are forced to tap expensive, natural gas-burning power plants that are kept for just such a purpose. Alternatively, utilities can buy power on demand from the spot market. The problem in either scenario is that rates charged for electricity remain constant even when the cost of supplying it can surge. As a result, utilities may lose money on hot days even though consumers are using more power.

Many utilities have encouraged consumers to voluntarily engage in energy efficiency, but changing consumer behavior can be challenging. For example, Southern California Edison has used the slogan "Give your appliances the afternoon off" for decades to try to get customers to reduce the strain on the grid from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., when millions of customers turn on large appliances such as clothes washers and dishwashers. While energy-efficiency programs have helped reduce consumption, the utility stands to make even bigger gains with the installation of smart meters.

Plants Can Keep Going During Storms
But as information on usage is extended further to the residence or business, customers will be able to see just how much energy their lighting, air conditioning, and appliances use. "The idea is that electricity costs more at peak-demand times, so if you showed those pricing signals to people, they can choose to shift usage to off-peak times," says Jeffrey Taft, global smart-grid chief architect at Accenture (ACN). The smart grid will also give utilities the ability to automatically turn down business and consumer appliances on peak days. Customers would probably be given some sort of discount in exchange for letting the utility cut power to certain systems at key times of the day.

In Springdale, Ark., the local utility once faced a high-demand day and called and asked Cargill to fire up its generators and separate from the grid—and paid the company to do so. "In the long run it netted out a lower cost for us," says Cargill Engineering Manager Jim Edwards. Those generators have come in handy at other times, too. When there was a big ice storm in Northwest Arkansas this past winter, Cargill ran the generators for six days straight to keep producing turkey meat. "We were the only facility in this area to continue processing products," says Edwards. "If the plant had been closed for those six days, it would have lost about $1.2 million."

King is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in San Francisco.

Rare Earth Elements: Where They Are, Where They Go (New York Times)

February 6, 2011
Many Want Rare Earths, but Few Are Mining Them

By KARL RUSSELL
The New York Times

"RARE earth” is a historical misnomer. Elements that fall under this label were identified mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the word “earths” was used to describe a group of geological materials. At the time, a subset of these was thought to be uncommon.

In fact, rare earths are relatively abundant. But they are very hard to extract, and processing them can cause environmental damage. The process involves toxic acids, and rare earths are often found in deposits containing the radioactive elements uranium and thorium.

The first color television included rare earths. Recently, demand for them has become more acute, as they have been used to make an array of high-tech products including smartphones, hybrid cars, flat-panel televisions, wind turbines and military weapons.

China has almost total dominance of the rare earth market, and concerned businesses and governments are pushing for expanded production in other countries. But it can take years to increase mining in Western nations, where there are many environmental and regulatory hurdles.

Electric Cars and the Lithium Battery Market

Monday, Apr. 05, 2010
Why Start-Ups Are Charging Into Lithium
By Steven Gray / Detroit

In February, President Barack Obama told the crowd at a Henderson, Nev., high school that not so long ago, the U.S. made barely 2% of the advanced batteries used in the world's electric vehicles. Now, thanks to a multibillion-dollar federal investment, American companies are positioned to increase production tenfold — and potentially control 40% of the global lithium-ion-battery market by 2015. "We've created an entire new industry," Obama said.

Not quite, but certainly the beginnings of one. Demand for lithium-ion batteries is increasing dramatically as electric-car technology improves and prices drop. Nissan has introduced the all-electric Leaf, and this year Chevy will debut the long-anticipated gas-electric Volt. Those and future electric cars need battery packs, and at least a dozen American lithium-battery start-ups are competing with Asian companies such as Sanyo and Hitachi to provide them. "There's a tremendous amount of competition," says David Vieau, chief executive of A123 Systems, a Watertown, Mass., start-up powered by federal money that is vying for the business. (See the history of the electric car.)

And it's a ton of business. The consulting firm Pike Research estimates that the global market for lithium-ion batteries could grow from $877 million this year to $8 billion by 2015. In North America, the market is expected to expand from about $287 million this year to $2.2 billion in 2015.

A123 Systems is a window on how the government's multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle gambit is working. The company was founded at MIT in 2001 with a $100,000 Department of Energy grant. One of its early products was lithium-ion batteries for power-tool maker Black & Decker. Last year, A123 Systems got a $249 million federal grant to open at least three lithium-ion-battery plants in Michigan that will employ hundreds of workers. Michigan is home to or close to many of the plants where electric vehicles are being made, of course, and the state has a surplus of skilled workers. It's not, ahem, a bad choice politically either.

Vieau attributes his company's recent success in part to its deep finances and manufacturing capacity. Customers regularly ask, he says, "Do you have the financial wherewithal to keep up and execute at a large scale?" Companies like A123 are busy wrestling with two key issues facing electric-car batteries: providing enough power to the car's engine and storing enough power to guarantee a defined range — say, 200 miles (about 320 km) — between charges. The goal for electric-car manufacturers is an affordable battery that can handle countless partial charge-discharge cycles over an eight-to-10-year life cycle. The battery has to absorb energy from braking and provide short bursts of power for acceleration. Lithium-ion batteries, with their high density-to-weight ratio, provide the greatest acceleration and range with the fewest batteries compared with lead-acid or nickel-metal-hydride batteries. One big problem: they can overheat and even blow up — bad enough in a single-battery laptop but potentially disastrous in a multibattery electric car. So engineers have been busy resolving the heat problem and refining the batteries' ability to handle partial charge-discharge cycles.

As for affordability, lithium-ion battery packs currently cost about $1,000 per kilowatt-hour of capacity. Which means the GM Volt's 16-kW-h battery pack alone would cost $16,000, according to some industry analysts. The price per kilowatt-hour has to fall below $500 to make production viable — and it will.

Sakti3 is another company trying to create a breakthrough. The company was launched a few years ago at the University of Michigan by an ambitious young engineering professor, Ann Marie Sastry. Sakti3 is developing solid-state (as opposed to liquid) lithium-ion batteries that Sastry believes will enable cars to travel twice as far as batteries do now, allowing the cars to be used the way internal-combustion-engine-driven vehicles are. Her firm is developing prototypes to deliver to automakers later this year. Sastry's 20-employee firm, based in Ann Arbor, has generated millions of dollars in government grants and considerable buzz — but so far no juice.

Automakers, meanwhile, are developing their own battery capability. Ford, for one, believes that designing its own lithium-ion battery packs will help streamline the development of its electric vehicles and reduce the cost. Design experts will be brought in-house, says Nancy Gioia, Ford's director of global electrification. By developing battery packs, Gioia says, "we get the volume and scale of more than 1 million units on our battery-management systems. Our suppliers aren't in a position to do that yet."

While they wait for the U.S. electric-auto market to develop, some new suppliers are looking toward consumer electronic goods and markets outside the U.S. to keep their plants busy and improve quality until the big orders come in. "We're in the early stages of what will be a significant run-up," says A123's Vieau. "There's a lot of business out there." Sastry echoes that view, saying many automakers rely on engine suppliers. "If the dream I and others have is realized, we'll see batteries being treated like engines," she says. Job engines, no less.




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Clean Energy: LED lighting market growth (WSJ)

LED Growth Is Making Sapphire Supplies Look Precious

By Sari Krieger
Of DOW JONES CLEAN TECHNOLOGY INSIGHT
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The light-emitting diode market is heating up and expected to boom in coming years, but there is already a supply chain bottleneck in the material on which the LEDs are grown - known as a sapphire substrate - which could hinder LED industry growth.

Manufacturers of the substrates, which are synthetic versions of the precious stones, haven't been able to produce enough to keep up with the recently rising LED demand, causing sapphire prices to spike. While this shortage may slow adoption some, or may hurt LED makers, it could benefit the few suppliers that do make this material, which include Rubicon Technology Inc. (RBCN), Monocrystal PLC, Kyocera Corp. (6971.TO, KYO) and Namiki Precision Jewel Co.

Jed Dorsheimer, an analyst with Canaccord Adams Inc., warns that the shortage issue is "severe." He said that in order to meet demand, current sapphire capacity has to grow by two to three times, depending on how much the LED market expands.

When the economy started to revive last year, demand for LEDs grew quickly for use in backlighting, such as for televisions, as well as for general lighting applications. According to the Department of Energy, LEDs are 10 times more energy efficient than incandescent lights and companies are starting to take advantage of these savings. The DOE predicts that LEDs will make up 70% of the lighting market by 2020, up from less than 1% currently.
Similarly, The Freedonia Group Inc., a Cleveland-based research firm, forecasts that U.S. demand for advanced lighting products such as LEDs, compact fluorescent lamps and sodium vapor HID lamps will grow 11% per year to $6.8 billion in 2013.

Dorsheimer said rising demand already has boosted sapphire prices by 50% in the past seven months, but he doesn't expect new capacity to come online until 2011.

He said the industry average price for a two-inch sapphire wafer went from $18 in 2007 to $10 in June 2009 to $15 now. A four-inch wafer, which has been less widely produced, has held steady at $80 to $90, he said.

Bill Weissman, chief financial officer of Franklin Park, Ill.-based Rubicon, said his company saw a 7% rise in the price of its sapphire in the last quarter of 2009 and predicts another 15% rise this year. But Weissman said that the sapphire is only 8% of the material for the LED chip, so it shouldn't affect the price of the final LED too much.

Expanding sapphire production to meet the rising demand can't be done quickly, according to Tom Griffiths, president and publisher of LED industry publication Solid State Lighting Design News.

"Sapphire production is capital-equipment driven, and both investment and credit funding is still being approached cautiously, so getting the money to expand isn't as easy as it may have been in past years," he said.

"Tightened supply will increase the sapphire costs and somewhat dampen the industry growth," Griffiths said. "That will be relatively short lived, as increased profits will make capital equipment expansion easier for existing suppliers, as well as enable new entrants to show a convincing business plan to get funding for equipment."

Companies grow sapphire by heating aluminum oxide to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Then LED manufacturers buy the sapphire wafers and load them into machines that lay on top of the sapphire wafer chemical layers of gallium nitrite, which is the light-emitting material. Compared with natural sapphires, the manufactured versions don't have impurities and are therefore clear.

Dorsheimer said that because companies were hesitant to expand production, waiting to see whether the increase in demand would remain, it will take a year or two for sapphire-makers to catch up with demand. Also, he said that LED-makers are asking for larger sapphire wafers, up from the traditional two-inch wafers, making production more difficult.

"New entrants are starting on four-inch and six-inch [wafers]," Dorsheimer said. "This reduces the number of sapphire suppliers as the specifications change when going to larger wafers - quality becomes more important."

Weissman said his company has ordered more machines to expand capacity. The company is building two new plants, one in Malaysia and one in Batavia, Ill., but they won't be ready until later in the year. Until Rubicon and other sapphire makers can expand, the world's sapphire supplies are tapped, Weissman said.

As well as the benefits of higher prices flowing to sapphire makers, Griffiths said Durham, N.C.-based LED-maker Cree Inc. (CREE) could gain a competitive advantage from the sapphire shortage because it uses silicon carbide as a substrate to grow LEDs.
"[Cree] can therefore presumably keep their cost-saving ramp moving unhindered," Griffiths said. "Eventually every LED manufacturer benefits as there will surely be a period of excess sapphire supply that will tank those substrate prices, at least temporarily while supplies adjust and consolidation occurs."

(Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight covers news about public and private clean-technology and alternative-energy companies.)

-By Sari Krieger, Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight; 212-416-2016; sari.krieger@dowjones.com

Growing Market for LEDs (WSJ, Japan Times)

NOVEMBER 5, 2009, 4:12 P.M. ET
Cree To Light Up 650 Wal-Mart Stores' Aisles With LEDs

By Sari Krieger
Of DOW JONES CLEAN TECHNOLOGY INSIGHT
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: Cree Inc. light-emitting diodes will soon be lighting up the retail giant's stores in various aisles.

Durham, N.C.-based Cree said Wednesday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) signed a deal with the company to buy two kinds of its LED lights, which the retailer will install in 650 of its stores in the first year. Although the companies wouldn't disclose the value of this deal for Cree, or exactly how many lights Wal-Mart bought, this move has larger implications for the LED lighting industry and Cree.

"I think it's an important milestone in what we've been calling the LED lighting revolution," said Cree Chief Executive Chuck Swoboda in an interview with Clean Technology Insight. "It demonstrates that LED lighting really works in commercial lighting applications."

Swoboda called this deal an "initial roll out," but he wouldn't say whether Wal-Mart has expressed interest in buying more LED lights, otherwise known as solid-state lighting.

Wal-Mart didn't return a call requesting comment.

The adoption of LED technology, and Cree's products specifically, by the retail giant could soon bring other retailers knocking at their door. Swoboda said that once some municipalities started using outdoor LED lighting, others soon followed suit. The retail arena should be similar, Swoboda said he hopes, because he thinks that once some companies try LED lights and can show some positive results, others will be less gun-shy about switching to the technology.

Wal-Mart bought Cree's LRP-38s, a spot light, to illuminate some of its products. This light lasts 50,000 hours, consumes 82% less energy than the 70-watt ceramic metal-halide bulbs it replaces and can last more than five years when kept on all the time. These lights also make products displayed under them look more vivid and they don't radiate heat down, helping delay product spoilage, as the company demonstrated at the Lightfair International Convention in May, held in New York. Cree rolled out the LRP-38 at the convention.

The deal also includes use of Cree's LR6 recessed can lights in some Wal-Mart new construction, but the companies wouldn't give further details on how many or where they will be used. The LR6 has similar specifications to the LRP-38, but it is a more general-purpose light, rather than a spot light.

Theo O'Neill, an analyst with Kaufman Bros. LP, said in an interview that this initial roll out brings Cree about $4 million to $8 million in revenue.

"It's obviously a plus for Cree," O'Neill said. "Plus it will help with industrial expansion of this business. There are five billion light bulbs in the U.S. and they are all going to convert to solid-state lights eventually. Big, big business."

O'Neill has a "hold" rating on the stock and a $36, 12-month price target. He doesn't own shares of the company and Kaufman Bros. makes a market in shares of Cree.

Jed Dorsheimer, an analyst with Canaccord Adams Inc., who has been consistently bearish on Cree's stock, acknowledged the significance of the deal. He doesn't own shares of Cree and Canaccord Adams conducts no business for Cree. He has a $45 price target and a "hold" rating on shares of Cree.

"It's also great to see Wal-Mart transition to solid-state lighting, as they did with refrigeration," Dorsheimer said. "Typically, they lead the market by one to two years."

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart has already installed LED lights in its refrigerator and freezer cases and is considering using LED parking lot lights, it said recently.

Shares of Cree climbed Wednesday $1.92, or 4.5%, to $44.70 on Nasdaq. Shares of Wal-Mart increased 89 cents, or 1%, to $51.27 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight covers news about public and private clean-technology and alternative-energy companies.)

-By Sari Krieger, Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight; 212-416-2016; sari.krieger@dowjones.com



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BUSINESS SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
Lighting Firm to Unveil LED Bulb
By SARI KRIEGER

Lemnis Lighting Inc. plans to announce this week the full-scale release in the U.S. market of a light-emitting diode bulb, its entry in the race to replace 60-watt incandescent lights.

As consumers look to cut down on energy use and the federal government's 2012 ban on incandescent bulbs approaches, sales of compact fluorescent lights have increased. These spiral-shaped lights use much less energy than traditional incandescent lights, which waste most of the energy they draw. CFLs also last seven to 10 times longer than incandescents.

But light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, promise a next generation of lights that are even more efficient, last longer, are more easily dimmable and, unlike CFLs, don't contain mercury.
Lemnis Lighting says its Pharox light looks like a traditional incandescent light, with a metal piece wrapped around the midsection of the light that acts as a heat-sink, keeping the LEDs cool and ensuring a long life of 35,000 hours, or about 20 years of normal household use. The bulbs are pricey, though, costing about $40 each.

Its light output looks like what consumers expect from a soft white incandescent light, as opposed to the harsher, blue-hue from a cool white often seen from fluorescents in offices and hospitals.

The LED light draws 6 watts and puts out the same amount of light as a 40-watt bulb if used right-side-up, such as in a desk lamp, or the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb if used in an upside-down application, due to the nature of LEDs.

Lemnis Lighting is owned by Tendris Holding, a business incubator and operator in sustainable technology and services based in Naarden, Netherlands. Both Lemnis and Tendris are run by Warner Philips, the grandson of Royal Philips NV co-founder Anton Philips. Tendris was formed in 2002 with investments from its insiders and friends and family. Philips is a 10% shareholder in Tendris.

Mr. Philips said in an interview that Lemnis is in talks with major U.S. retailers to sell the Pharox product.

Coming up with a quality, affordable 60-watt replacement light has been a challenge for the LED industry, partially for the reason that LEDs are by nature directional sources of light, as opposed to traditional incandescents that shine in 360 degrees. Top LED companies have been concentrating mostly on directional light sources for commercial and industrial purposes, which make up the bulk of the lighting market.

But the Department of Energy recently established the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize, known as the L-prize, which is a competition for companies to come up with the best 60-watt replacement light. The DOE said last week that more than 425 million 60-watt incandescent light bulbs are sold each year in the U.S. alone, representing approximately 50% of the incandescent light bulb market.
So far Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Philips is the only company to submit a product.

The DOE said an LED replacement for this purpose could save 34 terawatt-hours of electricity in one year, enough to power the lights of 17.4 million U.S. households and avoid 5.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually.

New York-based Lighting Science Group Corp. has a 40-watt incandescent LED replacement that the company says draws about 7 watts, lasts 40,000 hours and is dimmable.

Thomas Griffiths, an LED industry expert, said in an interview that he sees these three companies as the main competitors at the moment on the LED replacement light scene. Griffiths said the Pharox light looks like a good product, but only time will tell for sure, and he thinks the $39 sticker price is still too high.

Lemnis offers a three-year warranty on the product and the company estimates that an average utility rate of 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, a consumer will achieve a payback within three years.

"I think they're representing where the state of the technology affordably has us right now, but there's still a ways to go before there's a real replacement, and right now Philips is the one to watch because of this announcement," Mr. Griffiths said.

Philips said in a statement that it is confident its product meets the criteria of the L-prize, which calls for a higher level of efficiency, better quality light and more light output than the Lemnis and Lighting Science products.

Although Philips and Lemnis are competitors in this context, Philips acquired an equity stake in Tendris in January.

Mr. Philips said that if Lemnis, with the help of Los Angeles-based partner Digital Light LLC, can reach its goal of selling 10 million lights world-wide within the next 24 months, the price could drop to $30 per bulb.

Griffiths said LED replacement lights need to reach the $15 to $20 range before they'll really be viable.

Tendris' first investment was Oxxio, a supplier of renewable energy, which was sold to Centrica PLC in 2005. That exit gave Tendris at least $39 million more to play around with. The same year, the Dutch National Postcode Lottery also bought a 10% stake in Tendris, giving the company more capital to push its innovations out into the market.

Lemnis, based in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, was founded in 2005 and is on the verge of profitability, Mr. Philips said in an earlier interview.

Mr. Philips said he isn't looking for an exit with Lemnis, but he said long-term partnerships are always a possibility.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved


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LED light bulbs fly off shelves as price war starts


By YOSUKE FUKUOKA
Kyodo News
Light-emitting diode lights are selling like hot cakes since prices dropped by half this year.

The surge in demand for the new generation of light bulbs has quickly emptied store shelves, prompting more manufacturers to jump into the market.

LED lights first appeared about a decade ago, but their poor brightness limited them to emergency use. Recent advances in longevity and brightness, however, have turned their fortunes around completely.

Today's LED bulbs cost as little as ¥4,000 but boast a longevity of 40,000 hours, which is about 40 times the life span of incandescent bulbs. They also consume nearly 90 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs.Compared with fluorescent light bulbs, LED lamps are six times more durable and use at least 40 percent less energy.

Rising public awareness of environmental issues is also boosting LED sales. Countries embarking on "green" initiatives are letting incandescent bulbs fall by the wayside as they move to save energy.

Under the previous government led by the Liberal Democratic Party, then Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari announced a plan last year to cease production and sales of incandescent bulbs by 2012.

As a result, demand for LED bulbs is outpacing supply.

"We are swamped by orders and just can't keep pace with demand," said Takahisa Uzumaki, senior manager at Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corp., a unit of Toshiba Corp., which developed LED bulbs in 2007.

Sales of LED lights spiked this summer as prices began to come down. At one large store in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics shopping district, "Sold Out" signs were seen at the LED light section.

"Many customers buy LED bulbs just to try them out," said a shop clerk.

In June, Sharp Corp. unveiled a plan to sell LED bulbs for about ¥4,000, less than half the price of products made by other companies. Then more manufacturers, including Panasonic Corp. and NEC Corp., entered the fray.

Competition is heating up because startups founded only five or six years ago have entered the market, since it doesn't take large facilities to mass-produce LED bulbs. That's one of biggest differences of LEDs over incandescent and fluorescent lamps.

As new companies crowd into the LED business, Toshiba Lighting is taking on the challenge by halving its prices. Their bulbs now retail for under ¥5,000.

The Toshiba group is fostering the business and betting it will turn into a hot sector.

"We intend to boost annual LED lighting sales to ¥350 billion by March 2016 from the current ¥20 billion," said Masashi Muromachi, a senior executive at the parent firm.

Sharp aspires to raise annual sales to ¥50 billion in the near future.

With energy conservation a matter of global concern, manufacturers also anticipate brisk demand abroad. Toshiba aims to get overseas sales to account for 30 percent or more of its total LED sales by the year ending in March 2016.

Panasonic is also setting its eyes on foreign markets.

While they are experiencing a sudden burst of popularity, LED bulbs still leave something to be desired technologically. They are more expensive and less bright than their fluorescent counterparts.

The new type of light bulb can become standard in every household only when manufacturers address and overcome these weaknesses.

The Japan Times: Friday, Oct. 23, 2009
(C) All rights reserved

Clean Water Technology (from Forbes.com)

Out Of The Labs
Water Wizardry
Jonathan Fahey, 08.26.09, 6:00 AM ET


Seventeen billion gallons of sweet, fresh water are produced from salty water every day, enough to slake the thirst of 350 million people. Yet scientists don't really know how it is done.

Good thing they at least know how to make the process, which takes lots of energy, better.

Many desalination plants remove salt by forcing seawater against a membrane that allows fresh water through, but not salt ions. This is called reverse osmosis, and anyone with a set of taste buds can tell that it works. But scientists still haven't been able to model exactly what is going on.

"I can make you a membrane that does what you want," says Eric Hoek, a professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. "But I can't give you an equation that describes it."

Hey, whatever works. Hoek developed a membrane now in the process of being commercialized by a start-up company called NanoH20 that the company says could double the amount of fresh water produced per day compared with conventional membranes.

Desalination is booming worldwide, both because there are ever more people who need ever more scarce, fresh water and because desalination has been getting cheaper. Part of this is because desalination plant designers have incorporated clever energy recovery devices to reduce the amount of power needed to run the plants. (See "Making Sweet Water From (Almost) Perpetual Motion.") And part is due to big improvements in membrane technology.

Nikolay Voutchkov of Water Globe Consulting says membranes have gotten 2.5 to 3 times more efficient in the last decade, helping to drive the cost of desalinated water down from $6 to $7 per 1,000 gallons of fresh water to between $2.50 and $3.20.

But Jeff Green, chief executive of NanoH20, says that while costs came down through about 2003, they started to level off and even creep up a little because improvement of current membrane technology stalled.

In order to squeeze the salt out of water, seawater has to be pushed against the reverse osmosis membrane at very high pressures. Engineers have made the membranes, which are polymers very similar to Kevlar, stronger, more uniform and better at rejecting salt. But whenever they try to increase production by increasing their permeability, too much salt gets through.

"Polymer chemistry has been around for decades," says Green. "These membranes have been optimized."

Another issue: These membranes, constantly wet, are wonderful places for bacteria to flourish. The membranes get fouled and have to be treated with chemicals or replaced.

Hoek, a member of UCLA's Water Technology Research Center, knew that one way to both get water through faster and to make things less hospitable to bacteria was to incorporate so-called hydrophilic, or water-loving materials.

Current membrane polymers are hydrophobic; water beads on them like on a recently waxed car. That increases the pressure needed to force water through, and it creates comfy microscopic dry patches for bacteria to grab onto.

Hoek decided to try some well-known, porous, clay-like materials called zeolites, made of alumina and silicates. He knew particles of 100 nanometers could be made with pore sizes as small as just 0.2 nanometers, about the same size as a water molecule, but smaller than the 0.8 nanometer size of a salt ion. "We wanted to make a pore that water wanted to go into," he says.

People have tried (and are still trying) to make pure-zeolite films, but have failed in part because they are too difficult to control and too expensive to manufacture.

Hoek decided to make the zeolite nanoparticles first, then bake them into conventional polymers. The nanocomposite result wasn't quite as hydrophilic as pure zeolite, but also not as hydrophobic as plain polymers.

Also, he was able to add tiny traces of silver onto the nanoparticles, which act as an antimicrobial and make them even more resistant to bacteria. (See: Pure Bioscience Looks for a Silver Lining.)

He put his new nanoparticle-spiked polymers through the ringer, exposing them to high-pressure water and thriving bacteria. The results were good enough that NanoH20 was able to raise $15 million from venture capitalist firms Khosla Ventures and Oak Investment Partners to try to commercialize it.

NanoH20's Green says the company has modified Hoek's work substantially to improve and perfect the nanoparticle membrane, but he won't say how. He says the company is targeting nearly 100% improvement in water production, from 6,000 to 7,500 gallons per day per eight-inch area of membrane to 12,000 gallons per day. The membrane will be the same size and shape as current membranes, so plants won't have to be retrofitted. The company is building enough capacity to produce "tens of thousands" of membranes--a big plant incorporates 10,000 to 20,000. The first membranes will go on sale early next year.

Hoek, though, remains steadfastly humble about his discovery. "I threw one material that was already known into this membrane that was already known," he shrugs.

If they work, these membranes will be an impressive step in reducing the cost and energy required to deliver fresh water. If we still don't understand the physics of what's going on? The water will taste just as sweet.

Tax Breaks for Saving Energy

TAX INCENTIVES ASSISTANCE PROJECT

WWW.ENERGYTAXINCENTIVES.ORG


Consumer Incentives
Home Shell: Insulation, Windows, Sealing
Homeowners can get credits for energy improvements to their homes, such as windows, insulation, and envelope and duct sealing.

Home Heating & Cooling Equipment
Homeowners can get credits for installing efficient air conditioners and heat pumps; gas or oil furnaces and furnace fans; and gas, oil, or electric heat pump water heaters in new or existing homes.

Passenger Vehicles
Credits are available to buyers of hybrid gasoline-electric, diesel, battery-electric, alternative fuel, and fuel cell vehicles.

On-Site Renewables
Credits are available for qualified solar water heating and photovoltaic systems, small wind and geothermal heat pump systems.

Fuel Cells and Microturbines
Credits are available to homeowners and businesses who install qualifying systems. Fuel cells are an advanced technology to generate electricity at the site of use, but they are expensive for commercial buildings and are not widely available for homes.

Renewable Energy, Clean Technology: Water, Solar, Hydrothermal , Wind, Biofuel Companies (Businessweek)

Renewable Energy
May 06

By Aaron Pressman

Clean energy may be the wave of the future, but shares of alternative energy suppliers have taken investors on a wild ride. After getting hit hard by the credit crunch last year, the sector has rallied recently as stimulus plans from the Obama Administration and other governments promise substantial sums for renewable energy projects. The Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF, which tracks 30 companies around the world, lost 61% last year but has risen 22% over the past three months.


Much of the money will likely go to the industry’s biggest and best-known companies, like Denmark’s wind farm developer Vestas Wind Systems or solar-panel maker First Solar of Tempe, Ariz. There will also be opportunities for smaller players. But “this can be a hairy sector for investing in early-stage companies,” says Edward Guinness, co-manager of the Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy Fund.

While solar and wind projects are now commonplace, geothermal power is less developed. Geothermal systems typically use heat found deep underground to make steam and generate electricity. WaterFurnace Renewable Energy in Fort Wayne, Ind., builds heat pump systems that don’t require deep drilling for homes and businesses. The technology takes advantage of modest but consistent temperatures of about 55 degrees found a few feet underground. Air pumped underground is heated or cooled, which reduces the load on traditional heating and cooling systems and cuts energy bills by about two-thirds. Over time, that offsets installation costs. Revenue is growing 50% a year, and installations haven’t been hurt by the credit crunch, says Jack Robinson, lead manager of the Winslow Green Growth Fund. Guinness’ fund owns Energy Development Corp., a Philippine utility that oversees a dozen geothermal plants and consults on projects for others.

Stocks in the biofuels area have been crushed, not just by difficulty obtaining financing but by overbuilding and rising prices for key ingredients. It isn’t clear which players will survive. Still, the sector could one day generate big profits so it pays to stay up to date, says Guinness. He thinks Maple Energy, a Peruvian oil and gas producer, could become a leading ethanol supplier. Even so, Guinness sold the stock last year after a runup. “When they get their plant up and running, they’ll be the world’s lowest-cost ethanol producer,” he predicts. But he’s waiting to see how the project progresses.

President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce air pollution with a system of tradable pollution rights, known as “cap and trade,” could lead to the development of trading exchanges rivaling those for stocks, bonds, and derivatives. U.K.-based Climate Exchange, a publicly traded company, is the leading player in European pollution-rights trading, but Guinness says it’s too pricey at more than five times expected 2009 revenue (it has yet to show a profit). Unless a national cap-and-trade system becomes a reality in the U.S., the stock is too speculative, he says.

Another player, World Energy Solutions of Worcester, Mass., trails Climate Exchange in revenue. But new Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson is familiar with the type of system World Energy has developed, which could bode well for the technology, says Winslow’s Robinson. “They’re a small player but are just becoming profitable and growing at a 50% rate,” Robinson says. Investing in it now, he adds, is like being a venture capitalist