The Zino Society announced yesterday it has awarded its $50,000 Zino Green Fund to Seattle-based Hydrovolts, the maker of a novel underwater turbine for producing electricity in canals and waterways. Hydrovolts is led by Burt Hamner, who pitched the company at last month’s Zino Society Green Investment Forum.

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Burt Hamner, founder and CEO of the tiny Seattle startup Hydrovolts, has an idea he hopes will revolutionize the hydropower industry.

His invention, the “flip wing” turbine, is still in development. It is a simple and cheap spin on the paddle wheel, but comes with a twist that boosts its power production. The turbine is designed to sit in flowing waterways, such as rivers or canals. The flowing water pushes each blade from the front of the turbine to the back, but unlike a traditional paddle wheel design, the “paddles” on Hamner’s turbine flip open on their way back around, reducing drag and increasing power-harnessing ability.

I met Hamner at Williamson & Associates, a marine engineering company in Ballard that is helping Hamner with all the engineering for his turbines. The Ballard shop contained several giant pieces of marine equipment under construction, including a massive drill designed to test for methane 12,000 feet under the sea. “These guys can make anything work underwater,” Hamner says.

In contrast, Hydrovolt’s prototype turbine is about three feet long and sits against the wall in a conference room. It was built with motors scavenged from a washing machine. Hamner cranks it by hand, and a light bulb attached to the end lights up.

Washington state produces the most hydroelectric power in the nation, and the Columbia River’s Grand Coulee Dam is the largest hydropower plant, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But water-generated power on such a scale requires massive amounts of construction and maintenance, Hamner says, and you can’t just go building a dam wherever you feel like it (not to mention the environmental impact).

Hydrovolts’ technology is a little simpler. While the prototype turbine is a few feet long, the working turbines will be about the size of a refrigerator, Hamner says. “It’s a very simple thing,” he said. “I can deliver this in a pickup, and have it in the water and producing power in 30 minutes.”

The fridge-sized turbines will cost $13,000 and will produce on average two to three kilowatts per day, or as much as 20 kilowatts per day, depending on where they are installed, …Next Page »

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Seattle-based 3Tier Group has raised $10 million in venture financing to drive its quest to help developers and financiers spot the best places in the world to build renewable energy facilities. Good Energies led the venture round, which will be used to establish offices in Europe and Asia, as first reported this morning by John Cook at TechFlash.

3Tier’s star has been on the rise this year as the price of oil surged over the summer, rekindling interest in alternatives. Even with oil dropping to less than $40 a barrel, this company clearly has something the world still wants. 3Tier Group is all about using high-powered computers to crunch data that can help governments and energy companies find the most efficient place to put a wind farm, solar panels, or hydropower turbines, as I wrote in a company profile of 3Tier Group last month.

The company, founded in 1999, has grown to about 85 employees based at the Westin Building in Seattle. About one-third bring expertise in atmospheric science, one-third are software programmers, and the rest are in business, said CEO Kenneth Westrick. Their task is to use computing models to forecast the ebbs and flows of wind, solar, and hydro at different times of day and different seasons, for example. This is supposed to give investors more confidence in the reliability of the source of renewable power, over decades, that is needed before they will plunk down hundreds of millions of dollars for a new facility, Westrick said.

Some of 3Tier’s growth has been driven by big customers like General Electric, the Spanish utility Iberdola, Houston, TX-based Horizon Wind Energy, and Seattle City Light. Westrick told TechFlash that the dropping price of oil has “taken a little bit of the wind out of the sails in the short-term,” but he believes that will be offset by a new push for renewables from President-elect Obama.

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Brookfield Renewable Power, a Canadian energy company, is planning to open a new US headquarters in Marlborough, MA. The firm has a $13 billion portfolio in hydroelectric plants and wind farms across North America and Brazil. It is owned by Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM), based in Toronto.

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