Waltham, MA-headquartered lithium-ion battery manufacturer A123 Systems, which has operations in Michigan, announced today that it is kicking off a pilot project with Boston-based NSTAR to study the benefits of employing the A123′s grid battery technology in a suburban electric grid. The system, NSTAR’s first battery energy storage project, is expected to be up and running in 2012 at a substation in Medway, MA.

Andy Chu, A123′s vice president of marketing and communications, says his company’s grid battery system is designed to provide area regulation services, which address the momentary differences between electric power supply and demand. Fossil fuel-fired generators are the industry standard, but Chu says A123′s batteries can provide the same storage capabilities much more efficiently.

Though A123 Systems is well known for supplying products to auto makers for their electric vehicle lines, Chu says the project with NSTAR is far from the company’s first grid-storage project—in fact, grid energy storage is one of A123′s main vertical markets, and he says he expects that market to provide 40 percent of the company’s income in the future. A123 has manufacturing plants in Livonia and Romulus, in addition to an Ann Arbor research and development site.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Acquisitions were a big theme in the New England-area deal news this past week. We also saw several funding rounds and an intellectual property deal.

—Providence, RI-based Alektrona, a maker of smart-grid software and hardware, grabbed $250,000 in funding from the Slater Technology Fund, also of Providence. The money comes as part of a $510,000 seed funding round, which also included backing from NStar’s former chief information officer, Gene Zimon.

—Cara Therapeutics, a developer of treatments for pain and inflammation, raised $15 million in a Series D funding led by Rho Ventures. Alta Biopharma, Ascent Biomedical Ventures, CT Innovations, Devon Park BioVentures, Healthcare Private Equity, Mitsubishi International, and MVM Life Science Partners also participated in the financing for Shelton, CT-based Cara, which has now raised a total of around $43 million.

—Boston-based Gazelle, a website that facilitates the selling and recycling of used electronics, raised $12 million in a Series C funding round led by Physic Ventures. The financing also included Gazelle’s existing investors, Venrock Associates and RockPort Capital Partners. Gazelle says it will put the money toward scaling its businesses to meet new customer demand.

—Acton, MA-based Mintera, an optical-switch maker, was acquired by Oclaro, a San Jose, CA-based optical communications and laser technology firm, for $12 million in cash upfront. The deal could total $32 million if Mintera brings in revenues of $70 million over the next year and a half. Its revenue for the most recent fiscal year was in the neighborhood of $20 million.

—Euthymics Bioscience, a Cambridge, MA-based startup working on depression treatments that lack the side effects of many existing drugs, said it pulled in the first tranche of its Series A funding round, led by Novartis Venture Funds and Venture Investors. The financing could total … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Alektrona, a Providence, RI-based startup focused on smart grid software and hardware, has received a $250,000 funding commitment from the Slater Technology Fund, according to Providence-based Slater. The funding is part of a $510,000 seed funding round. Thorne Sparkman, a manager director at Slater, led the firm’s investment in Alektrona. Gene Zimon, a former chief information officer of the Boston-based utility NStar (NYSE:NST), is also investing in the round. The co-founders of Alektrona are Christopher Leidigh and James Higgins, both of whom are former employees of the embedded networking business at American Power Conversion, based in West Kingston, RI.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

You can’t win them all, but you can sure win a few. Ask C-Crete Technologies, the winner of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition this year. Team founder Rouzbeh Shahsavari, a MIT civil engineering PhD candidate, also won the Elevator Pitch Contest segment of the $100K in November for his 60-second pitch of his technology, which is a nanoengineered formula of concrete designed to reduce the carbon emissions that occur in traditional production of the building material. It’s also stronger and cheaper than the concrete already out there.

C-Crete was also a finalist in MIT’s Clean Energy Prize this week, but Stanford University team C3Nano won the $200,000 grand prize, for the transparent electrode technology it says will make photovoltaic solar panels less expensive and more efficient. That prize money was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and NSTAR.

Life sciences track finalist Aukera Therapeutics won the $10,000 audience choice award at tonight’s $100K awards ceremony, for the treatment it’s developing for the neurodegenerative disorder commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, by harnessing a naturally occurring protein that stimulates nerve growth. Wade described the finalist teams in greater detail in a piece earlier this week, so check out his story for a closer look at the other technologies that were in the running. I’m excited to see where C-Crete and Aukera are going, and am hopeful that at least a few other teams will turn into future startup profile subjects for this website.

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:          

In a ceremony attended by the state secretary of energy and environmental affairs, the director of energy initiatives at Google, and the CEO of NSTAR, the state’s largest utility, the $200,000 MIT Clean Energy Prize was awarded yesterday to a Michigan startup, Husk Insulation, whose innovations could help make refrigerators far more efficient—and roomier to boot.

Funded by NSTAR and the U.S. Department of Energy, the grand prize honors the student team with the most convincing and promising business plan for a successful energy or clean technology startup. It was part of over $500,000 in cash and in-kind prizes handed out to five student-led startups yesterday, including Husk and the winners in four subcategories of this year’s competition.

The Obama Administration has made the push for higher efficiency standards for household appliances, including refrigerators, a key part of its energy policy. In a three-minute “rocket pitch” for Husk before the prize announcement yesterday, Husk vice president of sales and marketing Erica Graham said the company’s patented technology—in which rice husk ash is converted into the core material for vacuum-sealed insulating panels—could increase refrigerator efficiency by up to 50 percent. Moreover, the superior thermal properties of this agricultural byproduct mean that a 1-inch-thick panel containing rice husk ash provides as much insulation as a 4-inch-thick panel filled with polystyrene. So refrigerators made with the new material could have 20 percent more interior space on the same footprint.

If every refrigerator in the United States were replaced with a model containing Husk Insulation’s material, the country could reduce its annual electricity consumption by 57 billion kilowatt hours—the equivalent of closing 31 coal-fired power plants, Graham said. Such a reduction would cut the nation’s overall carbon-dioxide emissions by 1.5 percent. And that’s not even counting the reductions in petroleum consumption that would come from avoiding polystyrene.

Walking away from the competition with a $200,000 check was “exhilarating,” Graham told Xconomy after the announcement. “There were so many teams that were very qualified. We’re very excited.”

Graham said the money would be a key part of the seed round for Husk, which advanced to the finals of the clean energy competition by winning in the biomass category—an achievement that itself carried a $10,000 prize, sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Renewable Energy Trust. The money “will help us get to a market-ready prototype,” Graham said.

Husk has been making the rounds of the cleantech business-plan competitions. In March, the startup won second prize in the Cleantech Venture Challenge hosted by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. The same month, it won the $21,000 second-place award in a clean energy prize competition in Ann Arbor, MI, sponsored by Detroit-based utility DTE Energy.

The other finalists competing for the $200,000 grand prize included three startups led by MIT students and one led by students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. Bob talked with students from several of the teams at last Friday’s reception for MIT-affiliated finalists in the Clean Energy Prize Competition and the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Levant Power, as winner of the transportation category, collected a $10,000 prize sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory’s Combustion Research Facilities. The company is developing an energy-recovering shock absorber for military vehicles, large trucks, and hybrid gas-electric cars. Founder Shakeel Avadhany, an MIT undergraduate, says the device can increase vehicle fuel economy by … Next Page »

Comments (14) | Reprints | Share:          

When is green energy not so green?

The central Massachusetts gas and electric distributor NStar said Tuesday that it plans to sign long-term power contracts with wind farms in Maine and upstate New York and let NStar customers get their electricity directly from those facilities, in exchange for a small premium on their utility bills. Not so fast, said the Massachusetts Energy Consumers Alliance, a non-profit energy provider, in a press release and in comments to the Boston Globe on Wednesday. NStar should buy all the renewable power it can get its hands on—but the utility’s plan to market this power directly to consumers conflicts with a Massachusetts state law designed to limit utilities’ monopoly power, says Larry Chretien, executive director of the alliance, which has petitioned the Commonwealth Utility Commission to disallow the program.

Energy entrepreneurs and industry observers contacted by Xconomy applauded NStar’s idea, which it’s calling “NStar Green,” and said it would be unfortunate if the program were delayed or quashed. “The NStar plan to offer wind energy to Massachusetts customers is fabulous,” says Nick d’Arbeloff, executive director of the New England Energy Innovation Collaborative, a Cambridge non-profit that promotes development of clean energy technologies. “It’s exactly the kind of program that’s required to raise consumer awareness and increase clean-tech activity in the state.”

But the problem, Chretien says, is NStar Green might actually slow energy innovation. Fewer firms will enter the green-power market if they have to compete with NStar itself to sell their electricity directly to consumers, he worries. “The law says that that the utilities are supposed to provide basic service and competing power suppliers are supposed to provide alternatives to the basic service,” says Chretien. “We want to see green alternatives, and we are not going to get them if we allow an investor-owned utility to have a monopoly on green power.”

State law, Chretien points out, requires utilities to meet a “renewable portfolio standard” under which they must buy 3 percent of their electrical load from renewable sources. NStar hasn’t been meeting its obligation, and contracts with the Maine and New York could help nudge the company toward compliance. But when it comes to packaging and selling green power, says Chretien, NStar should emulate the state’s other large utility, National Grid.

National Grid meets the renewable portfolio standard and supports smaller power operators by buying juice from three competitively selected renewable-energy providers, including the Alliance, which operates a windmill in Hull, as well as several solar-power facilities, and provides power to about 4,000 National Grid customers. “We think that if NStar is going to buy wind power from Maine and New York to comply with that law, it’s a great thing,” Chretien says. “But if they then start offering an ‘NStar Wind’ product, it’s certainly going to reduce or eliminate competition.”

But to have a major player like NStar competing in the renewable-energy market might be a healthy thing, d’Arbelloff suggests. “I fully understand that there may be competitive concerns here,” he says. “And when a big new competitor enters the fray, it does represent formidable competition. But on the other hand, it validates the market…It’s my hope that all parties will find a way to allow NStar’s plan to bear fruit, because this is exactly the type of action that needs to be taken in every state across the country.”

Comments | Reprints | Share: