[Editors note: Architect Robert Noble wrote this article with Glenn Croston]

The San Diego area is the home of numerous cleantech businesses that are developing innovative green cars (Aptera, V-Vehicle Co.), developing alternative fuels (GreenHouse International, Synthetic Genomics Inc., Sapphire Energy), finding alternatives to petrochemicals (Genomatica, Verdezyne), and providing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions (KEMA, Kyocera, Envision Solar).

Assisting our growing cluster is a network of non-profits, trade groups, government agencies, universities, and investors who share a common interest in cultivating a green economy. These groups collaborate on many projects, strengthening our vision for more green businesses, jobs, and investments in cleantech innovation. But while they share common goals, local green groups are also distinct in many ways and often compete for money, members, and media; their varying perspective, focus, message, membership, and goals can be confusing. If you’re an entrepreneur, how can you find support for the green innovations you hope to commercialize? Where do investors look for opportunities and advice? Where can founders find the resources they need to move their ventures forward?

We’ve compiled a listing of these groups to help San Diego entrepreneurs and others find the resources they need to grow green, and to help San Diego’s green economy grow.

—The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) is the cornerstone in developing San Diego’s green business cluster. As a non-profit, the CCSE works to advance the adoption of renewable energy, green building design, clean transportation options, and energy efficiency by providing workshops, information, and training.

—Cleantech San Diego is a membership-based non-profit industry association that sponsors events for businesses, investors, and others working in the cleantech cluster. They summarize their mission on their website, saying, “Cleantech San Diego advocates for new sources of investment capital, workforce development, international trade, federal and state research funding, targeted regulation, and sustainable land use planning and development.”

—San Diego Clean Enterprise Program, which is administered by Cleantech San Diego through a partnership with the City of San Diego and the mayor, which provides interest-free financing for energy efficiency improvements for small businesses. Cleantech San Diego also is working with the rest of the green community to support funding and grant applications, such as the effort to win $260 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) for local solar projects.

—San Diego Gas & Electric committed to develop a distributed solar power generation system in the San Diego region in 2008. So it’s no surprise that …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry, experts said yesterday. The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.

Biofuels development partnerships will be crucial to meeting renewable fuel standards that the federal government set in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Wain Fishburn, a founding partner of the Cooley Godward law firm’s San Diego office, said the standards require the U.S. biofuels industry to increase its production fourfold—from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons in 2022. Fishburn, who introduced the speakers at the Biocom event, said the ability to meet the federal goal depends on a variety of factors, including the ability to lower the cost of biofuels to be competitive with petroleum-based crude, and the scalability of feedstock, production facilities, distribution, and related infrastructure.

But what it really comes down to, as Verenium (NASDAQ: VRNM) executive William Baum told the audience, is capital.

Baum, who became Cambridge, MA-based Verenium’s executive vice president of business development in 2007 (following the 2006 merger of San Diego’s Diversa and Cambridge’s Celunol) said the need for capital was the theme he heard “over and over again” during a recent meeting that focused on the biofuels industry. “We’ve got hundreds of biofuel companies that are trying to get to the next stage. If you don’t have a big brother with deep pockets, like a BP, Exxon, Shell, or a Chevron, it’s going to be very difficult.”

A number of partnerships already have been established between biofuels startups and major energy conglomerates, Fishburn noted. He listed the following collaborations:

—BP, the London-based global energy conglomerate, has formed two strategic partnerships with Verenium, which has been developing technology to produce cellulosic ethanol using proprietary microbes to accelerate the breakdown of non-edible, high-cellulose plant material into ethanol. Baum described the first collaboration, announced in August 2008, as a technology joint venture for IP. (BP agreed to put up $90 million to develop “low-cost, environmentally sound cellulosic ethanol production facilities in the United States.”) Through a second deal announced nine months ago, BP agreed to provide an additional $45 million and to form a …Next Page »

Comments (4) | Reprints | Share:        

San Diego serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson is going to have to find something else to do now that Gizmo5, the VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) company he founded in 2003, has become part of a certain search giant to the north. We have that news and more.

—Google confirmed that it’s buying San Diego-based Gizmo5, a six-year-old company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. The service will become part of the Google Voice number-unification service. Google did not disclose the purchase price, which media reports put at about $30 million. Gizmo5’s 6 million users will still be able to use the service, according to a statement. But Google is suspending new Gizmo5 signups, and existing users can no longer sign up for a call-in number.

—Platformic, a Web-based startup that enables customers to create and manage their own websites, said it is adding social media capabilities. The two-year-old San Diego-based company, which has targeted broadcast companies, says its expanded software-as-a-service product will help a broadcaster’s audience share photos, create their own user profiles, and create personal blogs on the broadcaster’s Platformic-powered website.

—Qualcomm’s No. 2 executive opened a regional mobile technology conference in San Diego by providing an overview of steps the chipmaking giant is taking to help ease the pressure on wireless network bottlenecks as mobile data traffic soars. Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer told the 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference that in the year 2014, worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

—Technology innovations that help companies optimize their profitability will likely lead to the next wave of analytics-based software startups, according to Stephen Coggeshall of San Diego-based ID Analytics. Another hot area will be analytics that can help forecast consumer behavior, said Coggeshall, who was participating in a discussion about new opportunities in analytics during the San Diego Software Industry Council’s annual forum on analytics.

—Israel’s Panoramic Power won $250,000 and became the first winner of the top QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power is developing energy-monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy so-called “smart grid” technologies within their existing facilities.

—The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group said is getting $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a giant wind farm in eastern Washington state, about 110 miles east of Portland, OR. The $1 billion Windy Point/Windy Flats project is expected to generate enough electricity for 250,000 homes.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group says it has received $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a 400-megawatt wind farm in Klickitat County, WA, about 110 miles East of Portland, OR. Total investment in the project will be more than $1 billion. When completed, the Windy Point/Windy Flats project will be one of the largest wind farms in the nation, producing enough electricity for more than 250,000 homes per year. The project power has been designated for use by California municipalities.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

San Diego’s tech sector got some money and glory during a week that was overshadowed by news from two life science conferences: TEDMED and the annual Biocom Investor Conference. Get your tech news now while it’s still hot.

—To stay connected with open-source development for smart phones, San Diego’s Qualcomm created a subsidiary, the Qualcomm Innovation Center, that is focused on making sure the chipmaker’s technology works smoothly with Android, Symbian, and other open-source wireless platforms. Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) also joined the Symbian Foundation and is supporting the open source systems used by Nokia and others.

—One of the big selling points for algae-based fuels is that algae absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide before it gets harvested and turned into biofuels. Yet San Diego-based Sapphire Energy and other algae biofuel companies say they are having a hard time getting enough carbon dioxide at an affordable price to support their research and development efforts.

—Federal stimulus funds will help cover almost half the cost of a new $60 million wireless communications system that San Diego Gas & Electric is developing as part of its smart grid program. The $28.1 million grant is part of $3.4 billion to be allocated nationwide.

—Carlsbad CA-based Verdezyne, which is applying advanced biotechnology tools to the development of industrial chemicals and biofuels, raised nearly $3 million of a planned $15.2 million round of venture capital.

—JMI Equity, the venture firm based in San Diego and Baltimore, led a $5 million investment in Axeda, the Waltham, MA-based startup that makes a cloud-based system for wireless tracking of company assets. Axeda also raised $4 million in venture debt from MMV Financial of Toronto.

—TechAmerica San Diego, the local chapter of the industry group previously known as the AeA, issued nine awards at its 16th annual high tech awards luncheon. The group named winners in nine categories: MadCap Software (Software); InterKnowlogy (Internet); Verari Systems (Hardware); Quake Global (Communications); SeaBotix Inc. (Defense); Peregrine Semiconductor (Integrated Circuits); OneRecovery (Medical Device) IPS Group (Cleantech); Legend Films (Emerging Growth).

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

[Updated 10/27/09 12:55 pm. See below.] The Department of Energy has released a list of utilities that are getting federal grants to spur energy innovations under the $787 billion economic stimulus package, and San Diego Gas & Electric is getting $28.1 million to help build out its “smart grid” system.

Additional details are expected to follow President Obama’s speech at a solar facility in Florida, where he is expected to announce grants totaling $3.4 billion—the largest award made under the stimulus package in one day. The grants, which range from $400,000 to $200 million, are intended to help utilities build smart grid systems (which help consumers save money by providing real-time monitoring of their energy use), upgrade local power grids to reduce blackouts, and boost use of renewable energy.

The $3.4 billion is being allotted through 100 government grants in 49 states that will be matched by $4.7 billion in private investments.

[Updates below with new information from SDG&E and clarifies that the utility formed the coalition as part of a second grant application] SDG&E, a utility operated by San Diego’s Sempra Energy, said in September it has formed a coalition with the non-profit group Cleantech San Diego, UC San Diego, and major companies like Qualcomm, IBM, Cisco, and Intel. The coalitions was formed as part of a separate grant application that seeks $100 million for a regional demonstration system to help SDG&E manage the increasing demands on its power grid from electric vehicles as well as fluctuations in energy supplied to the grid by wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

“It’s all part of the broader smart grid funding that the federal government has put aside,” says Chris Baker, a senior vice president for shared services and chief information officer for SDG&E and its sister utility, Southern California Gas. “You can’t do a smart grid without an enabling communications infrastructure.”

Baker says the $28.1 million DOE grant will enable the San Diego utility to address a variety of wireless communications needs with a more comprehensive plan. For example, while the utility has installed about 130,000 smart meters so far, Baker says the grant will enable SDG&E to establish a dedicated 700 megahertz “takeout point” for transmitting data from the smart meters’ wireless mesh network. The $28.1 million grant to SDG&E from the DOE will cover almost half of the $60 million project. The funding also enables the utility to install high-bandwidth wireless capabilities at its substations and certain corners of its grid.

SDG&E is working to integrate 1.4 million wireless “smart meters,” which the utility has been installing, with an advanced IT system that will allow increased monitoring, communication, and control of a regional power grid that spans 4,100 square miles.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Sapphire Energy has tried to maintain a relatively low profile since it established its headquarters in San Diego—especially since last fall when the media seized on reports that Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment had joined a $100 million secondary round of venture funding for the algae biofuels startup.

So when Sapphire opened its San Diego headquarters for a public tour during the Algae Biomass Summit that was held here earlier this month, I jumped at the opportunity. The venture-backed company maintains a 70,000-square-foot facility on La Jolla’s Torrey Pines Mesa, and now has about 120 employees. The company’s labs look like a lot of other biotech labs in San Diego, aside from all the gyrating machines with flasks full of gently swirling emerald-green fluid. But there were two particularly interesting factoids about Sapphire that I learned during the tour.

The first was ironic: Sapphire officials explained that algae consumes 13 to 14 kilograms of carbon dioxide to produce a gallon of green crude oil, which is roughly equivalent to conventional petroleum-based crude—and just as suitable for making gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. This is a good thing, as the fast-growing algae helps reduce atmospheric CO2.

So what’s ironic? Sapphire and other algae biofuel companies have to pump carbon dioxide into the algae they grow in their laboratories. Moreover, Sapphire spokesman Tim Zenk says one of the big problems that Sapphire is facing these days is getting enough CO2—at an affordable price—to support the company’s algae biofuels research and development efforts. The greenhouse gas is so crucial that Zenk says it limits the growth of algae if it’s in short supply.

Once algae-based crude is refined into a fuel like gasoline, though, it produces CO2 as a byproduct of combustion—just as any engine that burns gasoline, diesel, or aviation fuel produces greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the argument is that algae biofuels are better for the environment because algae absorbs so much CO2 while it is growing, Sapphire officials estimate that algae-based fuels represent a 70 percent reduction in CO2 gases on a life-cycle basis compared to gasoline, diesel, or aviation fuel made from petroleum-based crude oil.

In the laboratory environment, however, CO2 gas is a valuable commodity. “You can buy carbon dioxide on the market,” Zenk says. “It’s heavily refined and used mostly by the food and beverage industry.” (The beverage industry uses dissolved CO2 to put the bubbly fizz into carbonated sodas.) But algae doesn’t need purified CO2. In fact, Zenk says the gas that goes up the smokestack at most utility power plants is 10 to 15 percent CO2—which is ideal for algal growth. As a result, some startups developing algae-based biofuels intend to …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

San Diego Gas & Electric, a public utility operated by San Diego-based Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), says it is planning an 18-month field demonstration of a solar power system that floats in a shallow pool of water. When operational later this year, the 20-kilowatt system developed by San Diego’s Pyron Solar is expected to generate electricity at higher efficiencies and lower costs than conventional flat-panel photovoltaic systems. Pyron’s technology uses a dual-tracking system and acrylic lenses and to concentrate the sun’s energy on a proprietary glass optic. Pyron says its system could produce nearly twice the electricity of conventional flat-panel photovoltaic systems.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle-based Principle Power, a company focused on offshore wind energy, announced today it has received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop water power technologies. Principle Power is working with the National Renewable Energy Lab and Marine Innovation and Technology on the project, which seeks to incorporate wave energy generation into the company’s floating support structures for wind turbines.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Xconomy has been around for 27 months now, long enough to watch quite a few of our fellow Boston-area startups expand, deal with serious challenges, and start to get their technologies out into the world. One of them is Ze-gen, a waste gasification company that I first visited in August 2007. This week I got a chance to take a second tour of the company’s demonstration plant in New Bedford, MA, an hour south of Boston, and to get an update from president and CEO Bill Davis, who founded Ze-gen in 2004.

The tour and the interview turned into a mini-education in the hurdles facing startups in the bustling, bruising cleantech sector. So far Ze-gen has been clearing those hurdles, and if all goes according to plan, the company will have its first commercial gasification plant up and running by the second quarter of 2011. That’s about a year behind the schedule the company originally laid out back in 2004. But considering the state of the economy lately, a year’s slippage isn’t all that bad.

I thought I would try to sum up some of the insights from Ze-gen’s experience in digest form, which I’ve done below. But first, a quick refresher on Ze-gen’s business and technology. The company is developing an industrial-scale system in which organic waste material such as construction and demolition debris (called “C&D,” and composed mostly of wood) is dropped into a vat of molten metal. Under tremendous heat, the waste instantly breaks down into elemental gases—mainly a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that’s known as “syngas.” The syngas can in turn be combusted to run electrical turbines or boilers, or turned into liquid biodiesel fuel. (Unlike incineration, the gasification process produces no carbon dioxide emissions; the name Ze-gen stands for zero-emissions generation.)

The feed hopper in Ze-gen's demonstration plant deposits feedstock (shredded wood waste) onto a conveyor.

Ze-gen’s prototype system takes up a building the size of a large barn—and the commercial version will be even larger. The system was in full, hot, noisy swing during my visit. As the photos scattered through this article illustrate, the process is fairly simple, with shredded C&D waste falling from a hopper onto a conveyor and up an elevator, then falling back down into a furnace half-filled with a molten copper bath that’s maintained at about 2,400 to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Syngas from the furnace flows out into a combustor—where the boiler or turbine would go, in a commercial plant—and leftover gases are scrubbed and vented.

Feedstock eventually drops into the gasification furnace, which is half-filled with molten copper.

Lately, Ze-gen has been running the plant for about 12 hours a day, gathering data on its syngas production efficiency using various types of feedstock, and at various bath temperatures. Getting to this point has been a five-year slog. “Any pre-revenue company, in my view, is frustrating, or should be frustrating, because it takes other people’s money in order to get a technology to the point where it’s producing,” says Davis. “For the first few years, at our demonstration plant, it was a lot of episodic testing. You’re not really ready for commercial deployment until you can prove that you can run continuously.” But Ze-gen now has the permits it needs to run 24/7, and as soon as the company can hire enough qualified staff, the gasifier will be running around the clock. “It’s actually quite satisfying, because I can come down here on any given day without making any special plans, and the plant is running,” Davis says.

The company has more than doubled in size since my last visit: it now has 27 staffers, 11 of them in an adminstrative and engineering office in Boston and the rest at the plant, which is conveniently located on the grounds of a solid waste sorting facility in New Bedford. All of that growth takes money, of course, and earlier this year, the company augmented a $4.5 million Series A round from 2007 with a much larger, $25 million round. The main funders include …Next Page »

Comments (6) | Reprints | Share:        

‘Tis the season for startup-pitching events. Last week, it was the Zino Society’s investment forum in Seattle. Today it’s the DEMOfall09 conference in San Diego, where four Northwest companies are presenting. And tonight there is nPost’s networking and demo event for tech startups at the Columbia City Theater in South Seattle.

But there is also a notable newcomer to the scene. Alibaba, the Hangzhou, China-based Internet commerce firm, and Inc. magazine announced today the semifinalists in their U.S. entrepreneur competition, called “Newpreneur of the Year.” Thirty entrepreneurs will compete in six cities across the country, including Seattle, for 12 spots in the next round of competition, where the public will vote for the businesses they think have the most potential to revive the economy. (The other cities are New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles.) The final round will take place on Nov. 18 in San Francisco, where one winner will take home $50,000, and four others will split another $50,000.

The Seattle semifinalist event is on Oct. 20 at the Edgewater Hotel. Five local entrepreneurs will pitch their companies and ideas, ranging widely from alternative energy, medical devices, and retail, to the decidedly low-tech world of kitchen and fashion accessories. The winners will move on to the final 12 in the nation. Here’s a snippet on each of the Seattle contenders:

—Jessica Aceti will be pitching Cap-sac, a modern line of convertible accessories, including a fanny pack for your head. The product folds into itself and can also be used as a purse. (This I have to see, though it’s safe to say I’m not the target audience.)

—Steven Bohannon from Bainbridge Island, WA, will pitch Feed Your Mind, a vending machine company focused on providing healthy, nutritious, and entertaining alternatives to traditional vending offerings. Its product mix includes crossword puzzles, games, new and used books, playing cards, maps, and nutritious snacks. Machines will be placed strategically where consumers get stuck waiting—at hospitals, airports, bus and ferry terminals, and so forth.

—Burt Hamner of Seattle will pitch Hydrovolts, the renewable energy company we’ve profiled before in Xconomy. Its key technology is a hydrokinetic turbine that can be placed in a water current (like a canal or stream) to provide electricity for up to a dozen homes. Hamner is no stranger to pitch competitions; Hydrovolts won the “audience favorite” prize at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s First Look Forum last March, and took home the $50,000 prize in the Zino Society Green Investment forum in May.

—Cindy Sawyer of Bothell, WA, is pitching ToweLocs, a locking device that keeps kitchen and hand towels secured, and prevents them from falling to the floor. It may sound mundane, but it’s the kind of simple, stylish home accessory that might just take off if it solves a real problem for people.

—Joel Smith of Edmonds, WA, will pitch Forward Mobility, a line of medical mobility products to help disabled customers maintain their independence. The company is looking for funding to finish the production tooling of its new walking leg brace, the Freedom Leg, which allows a person to walk on an injured leg with zero weight put on the knee and below.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

San Diego Gas & Electric has formed a coalition with the non-profit group Cleantech San Diego, UC San Diego, and major companies like Qualcomm, IBM, and Intel to integrate emerging “smart grid” technologies in the public utility’s regional power grid.

The coalition’s goal is to develop and deploy a host of innovations, including renewable energy generation, new types of energy storage systems, advanced electric transmission and distribution technologies, advanced sensors, and wireless “smart meters.” It also plans to seek $100 million in federal economic stimulus funding, part of more than $4.5 billion in smart grid funding designated by the Obama Administration as part of its new national energy policy.

Smart grid technology also is intended to enable residential utility customers to use the Internet to monitor their home energy consumption. SDG&E, the public utility operated by San Diego’s Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), began installing digital smart meters in suburban San Diego last year. The meters monitor each customer’s electricity and gas usage and use Zigbee wireless networking technology to regularly transmit data to the utility’s computerized information center.

The coalition SDG&E put together includes state agencies, a labor union, academic researchers, and companies developing such technologies, such as GE, Cisco, Itron, BAE Systems, SAIC, BMC Software, and On-Ramp Wireless. Altogether, 28 organizations are participating in the effort.

“The stimulus dollars are matching funds, so SDG&E and the coalition are matching the amount they are requesting,” says April Bolduc, a utility spokeswoman. “SDG&E has been working with many of these companies for years on individual projects and this is the first time they’ll all be brought together to work together on interconnecting all of the projects to create a smart grid.”

SDG&E, which is leading the coalition, will pass any federal smart grid funding through to the participating tech companies to complete their work, Bolduc says. “SDG&E will be prioritizing and making decisions along with the partners.”

UC San Diego, which has invested heavily in its own energy initiatives, will provide research and development resources—along with UCLA and the Energy Policy Initiatives Center at the University of San Diego School of Law. Lisa Bicker, president of Cleantech San Diego, says their role is to explain the benefits of smart grid technologies to diverse segments of the community.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

San Diego wind turbine maker Helix Wind made some more acquisitions, and out-of-business chipmaker Sequoia Communications arranged to sell its equipment in an online auction tomorrow. So it was a good news, bad news week for technology here.

—San Diego’s Sequoia Communications, which gained attention in the wireless chip industry when it introduced a multimode transceiver, has ceased operations. The nine-year-old chipmaker, which raised about $64 million from at least eight venture investors, was unable to secure additional capital.

—San Diego-based Helix Wind (OTC: HLXW), which is developing vertical-axis wind turbines, has agreed to buy the assets of two Oregon wind turbine companies in a bankruptcy case. The non-binding contracts for Abundant Renewable Energy and Renewable Engineering, which have the same owners, could be worth as much as $6.5 million. Helix has been moving to expand its product line of small-scale turbines.

—San Diego video codec developer DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) settled a lawsuit that DivX filed after Yahoo backed out of an Internet advertising agreement.

—San Diego-based Platformic, which makes Web development and content management technology, introduced a new mobile blogging tool, which the company says is ideal for journalists and professional bloggers.

—In a two-part “state of venture” quiz that Xconomy’s Bob Buderi put together with help from the Boston office of the Cooley Godward Kronish law firm, contestants learned that company valuations have been rising in the past quarter. The quiz, which is based on nationwide data, also shows that more than half of the Q2 deals were “flat” or “down” rounds. Check out the quiz here. The answers are here.

—Amid the nationwide downturn in venture capital investment activity, I’ve written a fair amount about the evaporation of San Diego’s hometown VCs. Now Connect, the San Diego non-profit group that serves as a catalyst for technology innovation, has proposed a series of initiatives to help fill the gap—including the formation of a seed fund. Connect CEO Duane Roth has said the initiatives will require more than $10 million, which Connect has begun to raise from both private and public sources.

—Xconomy has made it easier for you to get our electronic missives on your mobile phone by going to http://m.xconomy.com for the new mobile-friendly version of our site. But it’s only one of many new developments at Xconomy. And as always, you can sign up for Xconomy’s e-mail newsletters, including specialized newsletters, and our RSS feeds here.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

There were deals to report in San Diego last week. Not necessarily big deals, but even little deals are a big deal these days. Read all about it in this week’s BizTech roundup.

—The V-Vehicle Co. operated in stealth mode in San Diego for three years before it surprised many in June, when the startup automaker announced plans to build a new line of fuel-efficient cars in northeastern Louisiana. Now the story is unfolding a bit more. A regulatory filing that reveals V-Vehicle has raised nearly $63 million in venture capital also shows that Google Ventures is an investor in the company, along with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the prominent Silicon Valley VC firm.

—San Diego’s Senomyx (NASDAQ: SNMX) said last week it could get as much as $34.5 million through a new collaboration with Switzerland’s Firmenich, the largest private flavor and fragrance company in the world. The deal gives Firmenich rights to compounds that Senomyx has developed to enhance the taste of table sugar and two other sweeteners. The money will come in handy for Senomyx, which expects total 2009 revenue to fall between $18 million and $22 million, while total expenses are projected to range from $46 million to $49 million.

—San Diego Internet startup KidZui, a San Diego Internet startup for children that has raised almost $12 million in startup venture capital since 2006, launched ZuiTube—an online video site with almost 60,000 kid-friendly videos. ZuiTube uses 200 part-time editors, who are mostly parents and teachers, to pre-screen the videos—just as KidZui prescreens websites to make sure they’re age-appropriate. KidZui is aimed at children from 3 to 13 years old.

—The San Diego-based IPS Group, which previously specialized in providing cellular networking equipment, has raised more than $1.3 million from individual investors to turn itself into a specialized maker of high-tech parking meters. The privately held company’s parking meters are solar-powered, wireless, and Internet-enabled. The technology enables motorists to use a credit card to feed the meter, and it enables municipalities and other customers to use the Internet to monitor their meters.

—The San Diego News Network, which operates a website that provides news and information about the San Diego community, has raised more than $707,000 from its individual investors, and plans to raise about $2 million in the current round. SDNN CEO Neil Senturia told me the online news operation, which was launched five months ago, is growing rapidly and is expected to hit breakeven by the end of this year.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The Knight & Carver Yacht Center was founded in 1971 along the southeastern shore of San Diego Bay, where it continues to build and repair large boats, specializing in custom-built yachts and commercial passenger vessels. Because so many boat hulls are made of fiberglass, the National City, CA-based boatyard also has worked extensively with fiberglass composites. So it was smart, really, when a wind turbine operator called the shipyard roughly 12 years ago to ask if Knight & Carver could repair a broken turbine blade. Figuratively speaking, the yard boss said, “Sure, we’ll give it a whirl.”

Today the Knight & Carver Wind Group operates as a separate company—a spinout, so to speak—with 250 employees, about twice as many as the yacht center. The wind group develops prototype turbine blades at facilities near its headquarters in National City, manufactures 82-foot-long turbine blades in a new facility the company built in Southeastern South Dakota, and dispatches dozens of wind turbine repair and maintenance crews to wind farms throughout the United States.

STAR blade

The Knight & Carver Wind Group is moving now to commercialize its design for an innovative curved wind turbine blade, which was developed to operate more efficiently than conventional turbine blades—and at lower wind speeds. A key feature of the blade, known as the Sweep Twist Adaptive Rotor, or STAR blade, is that it automatically twists to adjust to wind speeds. Twisting enables the massive blade to optimize the wind turbine’s energy output in much the same way that trimming a sail optimizes the speed of a sailboat. As a result, the STAR blade can operate in low winds of 10 mph to 15 mph, and adjusts its pitch as winds increase to reduce excessive loads on the electricity-generating turbine.

Sam Brown, Knight & Carver’s president, says the STAR blade was developed under a $3 million research and development project initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy. The company, which shared a third of the development cost, collaborated in research and development of the blade with scientists at U.C. Davis and the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. The project began in 2006, and culminated last year with the DOE’s Wind and Hydropower Technologies division naming the STAR blade as one of the agency’s “Top 10 Program Accomplishments.’

A set of three prototype STAR blades, each more than 89 feet long and nearly 8 feet wide, were used to replace standard blades on an existing wind turbine in Tehachapi, CA. Brown says field tests show his company’s blades are producing more electricity.

“We’re seeing a minimum of 8 percent improvement over exactly the same turbines in exactly …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

The biggest news by far last week was ExxonMobil’s decision to invest $600 million in biofuels, with half of that going to San Diego’s Synthetic Genomics. A number of companies also launched new technology iniatives. To find out what’s happening, just keep reading.

—ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, said last week it plans to invest $600 million to develop algae-based biofuels, with least $300 million going to fund fundamental work at Synthetic Genomics, the startup co-founded by J. Craig Venter, the human genome pioneer. Venter said Synthetic Genomics plans to begin construction soon on a research and test facility in San Diego. Venter’s wife, Synthetic Genomics spokeswoman Heather Kowalski, told me the ExxonMobil deal won’t affect the startup’s joint venture with BP, where the initial focus has been on coal. Kowalski also said that BP is an equity investor in Synthetic Genomics, but ExxonMobil is not.

—Covario, the San Diego-based software analytics startup, said it has developed a new software-as-a-service program that automates the process of analyzing Web traffic on a customer’s corporate website. Covario says its “D3″ product for search engine optimization replaces the time-consuming work often performed by Web marketing agencies.

—San Diego wireless giant Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) said it is “reviewing its options” for LifeComm, its virtual mobile network focused on healthcare services. Qualcomm said LifeComm has been unable to raise enough capital from third parties to fully develop its initial launch product. Mobihealthnews, a Boston website focused on the wireless healthcare industry, said Qualcom has decided to pull the plug on LifeComm.

—Aculon, a San Diego startup specializing in nanocoatings for use in a variety of industries, said its proprietary technology replaces hexavalent chromium in paint primers applied to stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, and other metal surfaces. Hexavalent chromium is a toxic, cancer-causing heavy metal used to make anti-corrosion coatings. Aculon CEO Ed Hughes told me Aculon’s technology forms a coating that is just one molecule thick, or 2 to 4 nanometers.

—San Diego’s TelCentris said it is upgrading its VoxOx universal communicator service to include an automated “personal assistant” that can answer your phone calls and route them according to your preferences. A VoxOx user can combine his or her existing phone number with their e-mail service provider, instant messaging service, and social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

—Simon Thompson, ESRI’s director of commercial marketing, mapped out some of the innovative trends in Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, when we met amid the hubbub of the 2009 ESRI International User Conference in downtown San Diego. Thompson said one trend stems from creating GIS mapping “masks,” or layers of mapped information, so you can change the underlying data set on your iPhone app from a map of gas stations to a map of restaurants or schools. Another key trend he discussed involves the convergence of GIS mapping technologies with software analytics.

—Quasar Geophysical Technologies of San Diego has developed a new type of electromagnetic sensor that is sensitive enough to detect tiny electrical currents flowing through subsea rock—and variations in the conductivity among different types of geological formations. The company says its technology is sensitive enough to help the oil and gas exploration industry increase its chances of discovering offshore oil and gas deposits. Quasar has designed its sensors to be deployed on the ocean bottom, as deep as 2.5 miles below the surface, for weeks at a time.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The $600 million that ExxonMobil is investing to develop algae-based biofuels, including at least $300 million through its partnership with San Diego’s Synthetic Genomics, represents the largest single investment in the emerging technology, according to J. Craig Venter, Synthetic Genomics’ founding CEO.

Venter and Emil Jacobs, a vice president at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, discussed what Jacobs describes as “a collaborative research and development program” during a conference call with reporters this morning. ExxonMobil plans to spend about $600 million on the effort over the next five to six years, with at least half of that funding work at Synthetic Genomics.

With ExxonMobil’s backing, the startup plans to begin construction of a new biofuels test facility in San Diego to test different strains of genetically engineered algae and methods of commercial biofuels production. “It will be a greenhouse facility that will enable us to test open and closed bioreactor systems,” Venter says. “We hope construction will start fairly soon.”

According to Venter, Synthetic Genomics already has engineered algae to “secrete hydrocarbons,” which would enable a different approach to commercial biofuel production than what other biofuel startups have envisioned. By developing algae that secrete fuelstocks rather than algae that store the oils they produce within their cellular bodies, Venter says the technology becomes “biomanufacturing instead of farming.” Rival startups, such as San Diego’s Sapphire Energy, have been described a commercial production process that involves extracting oil from algae grown in open ponds.

Venter, who gained renown for his brash approach to sequencing the human genome, founded Synthetic Genomics in 2005 with a handful of other prominent scientists and investors. The co-founders include Juan Enriquez, a managing director of Excel Venture Management, which also invested in the startup, and Hamilton O. Smith, the microbiologist and Nobel laureate who serves with Venter as the company’s co-chief scientific officer.

During a wide-ranging conference call with reporters, Venter and Jacobs described aspects of their collaboration, and identified a number of problems that must still be resolved before biofuels derived from algae becomes a reality. Some of the issues they discussed are:

—Before deciding to make its $600 million investment in algae-based biofuels, Jacobs says, “It’s safe to say we looked at all biofuel energy sources.” In scrutinizing other potential biofuel products, Jacobs says, ExxonMobil considered the technical challenges of the product, the ability to take the technology to industrial-scale production, as well as environmental factors, such as the effects on carbon dioxide, land use, and water use. Finally, Jacobs says, they chose the biofuel technology offering the best odds of leading to a product that can be competitively priced with petroleum-based fuels. “Once we identified algae biofuels,” Jacobs says, “we cast the net in terms of alright, who do we want to work with?”

—Among the immediate goals is to identify the strains of algae that can be grown rapidly and are the most robust in producing lipids, fatty molecules that can be converted into hydrocarbon fuels. Researchers also must determine the best method of commercial production, which may involve growing algae in open ponds, closed ponds, or closed-system “bioreactors.” Jacobs says the production system must be low-cost and highly efficient to produce biofuels at a price that is competitive with such petroleum-based transportation fuels as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

—Production facilities will have to be established in locations with several key factors, which Jacobs says include sunlight, water (algae grows well in saltwater and brackish water) and carbon dioxide, a notorious greenhouse gas that is absorbed by algae and other plants and essential to their growth. Jacobs says utilizing the carbon dioxide produced by a power plant or refinery to feed the algae could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:        

J. Craig Venter, the maverick co-founder of San Diego’s Synthetic Genomics, has been hinting that the company had a huge funding announcement in the works—and tonight The New York Times has the story on its website.

The newspaper says ExxonMobil has laid plans to invest $600 million or more in the development of renewable, algae-derived biofuels through a partnership the oil giant has struck with Synthetic Genomics, whose co-founders include Juan Enriquez, a managing director of Excel Venture Management, one of the startup’s backers. The Times account quotes Venter and Emil Jacobs, an ExxonMobil vice president for research and development. ExxonMobil told the Times it plans to spend $300 million internally on biofuels research and development and make an equivalent investment, or “potentially more,” in Synthetic Genomics’ own research and development—providing the San Diego startup meets certain milestones.

Heather Kowalski, Synthetic Genomics’ spokeswoman (and close Venter confidante), also notified me by e-mail that the company has arranged a teleconference this morning to formally announce the initiative.

The news represents a coup for San Diego’s emerging renewable energy industry, which includes Sapphire Energy, another algae-based biofuels startup that has raised at least $100 million in venture funding from Bill Gates’s Cascade Investment, Arch Venture Partners, Venrock, and Wellcome Trust.

Venter told the Times that ExxonMobil’s involvement represents a key element in bringing large-scale industrial capabilities to the biofuels industry, which remains focused primarily on solving the problems of technology innovation rather than those of commercial production. San Diego’s prominence as a center of expertise and as an incubator of new biofuels technologies prompted UC San Diego and other institutions to announce in April they had formed SD-CAB, the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology.

Venter hinted about a forthcoming major announcement in April, when he made a presentation at an “innovation summit” organized by San Diego’s Connect, the local non-profit group that supports technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Renewed talk several weeks later prompted our follow-up on Synthetic Genomics’ capabilities.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Amid fresh signs of concern for venture capital in San Diego, we saw some local technology startups take big risks to push their business forward. Our wrap-up of the week’s innovation news begins now.

—The largest wireless communications provider in Japan, NTT DoCoMo, invested $45.5 million to acquire a 35 percent stake in PacketVideo, the last operating company remaining at San Diego’s NextWave Wireless (NASDAQ: WAVE). PacketVideo spokesman Neil Sharma told me the deal provides a key infusion of cash for NextWave, which intends to use the proceeds to pay down its debt and help fund its corporate restructuring.

—The Tech Coast Angels’ Ralph Mayer and Mike Elconin added some interesting perspective to our ongoing discussion concerning the evaporation of San Diego-based venture capital. In an Xconomy Q&A, Elconin observed that he’s seeing VCs throughout Southern California migrating to the San Francisco Bay area. He also says VC activity was trending down in San Diego even before the current recession hit.

—OK, the financials at San Diego’s Helix Wind look, uh, unfavorable. But the startup wind turbine maker is advancing its business on several fronts. The company signed a joint development agreement to create a wind turbine for an oil field injection system. Helix is acquiring Venco Power, a German maker of eggbeater wind turbines. And the company has introduced a “smart grid” wind turbine monitoring system.

—BakBone Software CEO Jim Johnson told me he’s continuing to look ahead for ways to broaden the company’s core business in data storage and recovery. The San Diego-based company made two acquisitions in May—but only after BakBone had emerged from a tunnel of accounting woes that lasted more than four years. BakBone shares trade on the Nasdaq bulletin board.

—A mid-year survey by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst shows that fundraising by U.S. venture capital firms fell to its lowest level since 2003. The survey shows 51 venture firms have raised $5.1 billion nationwide during the first six months of 2009. That’s down by almost two-thirds from the first half of 2008, when 115 VC firms raised $13.6 billion.

—Under a contract awarded by the U.S. Navy last week, San Diego’s General Atomics will develop a prototype electric motor to be installed in a guided missile destroyer for use during low-speed operations. The Pentagon said the project to develop a hybrid-electric warship is intended to demonstrate significant fuel savings.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Scott Weinbrandt spent 25 years working in computer technology, including 10 years as an executive at Dell, the direct-sales computer giant, as well as time as a senior vice president at Gateway, the onetime San Diego computer maker that is now part of Acer. During that time, the computer industry moved from centralized mainframes to distributed personal computers.

Now Weinbrandt says he’s seeing the same trend emerging in the renewable energy sector as the president and chairman of Helix Wind, a San Diego startup that specializes in vertical-axis wind turbines. “Big wind is getting a big pushback,” Weinbrandt says.

While many companies are still pursuing big centralized wind farm projects, such as the one near Palm Springs, CA, there’s also a movement to install smaller wind turbines in backyards and on rooftops.

If he’s right about the trend, Weinbrandt has positioned Helix Wind (OTC: HLXW) to catch the prevailing breeze by targeting urban residential and commercial customers. “If you look at what we’re doing, our goal is to be the No. 1 small wind solutions provider,” Weinbrandt says.

The helical-shaped turbines developed by Helix Wind founders Ian Gardner and Ken Morgan are visually stunning—they look so much like spinning sculptures that Weinbrandt says some customers are buying them for the product’s aesthetic value. So-called Savonius turbines, such as Helix Wind’s iconic design, are usually considered less efficient at generating electricity than propeller-driven turbines with a horizontal axis. But Weinbrandt says a key benefit of the helical platform is its ability to operate at high torque in lower wind speeds—and to continue operating at high wind speeds.

“What we’ve done is take it to another level,” Weinbrandt says, noting Helix has 43 IP filings in the U.S. and elsewhere, with one patent pending at two trademarks received. “This technology has been refined and one of the key components is the ability to start up in light winds and still sustain high winds without shutting down. Most of our competitors have to shut down at 40 miles per hour.” The cleantech company says it competes with a variety of other vertical-axis turbine makers in the U.S., including Oregon Wind of Portland, OR, and Mariah Power of Reno, NV.

While Helix counts more than 250 different types of small …Next Page »

Comments (6) | Reprints | Share: