Busy day for a couple of well-known cleantech companies around Boston. One public company has signed a big deal in China, while the other, an ambitious upstart, is carefully protecting its intellectual property as it heads toward large-scale commercialization.

—A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE), the Waltham, MA-based maker of lithium ion batteries, said today it has won a contract with China’s Dongfang Electric, a large manufacturer of wind turbines and power equipment. A123 will provide an energy storage system for Dongfang’s manufacturing facility in Hangzhou by the end of this year. Financial terms weren’t given. If all goes well, this will be A123’s first storage system installed in China.

A report in CNET today has more context on the deal: A123’s battery bank will be attached to a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine and diesel generator to test how well the batteries can smooth out the dips in wind energy production. A123 has car battery manufacturing facilities in China, but no grid storage systems there yet, the report says.

—Joule Unlimited, the Cambridge, MA-based biofuels startup, said today it has been awarded a pair of U.S. patents that cover its method for producing ethanol at high volumes and high efficiencies. The method involves genetically engineering “photosynthetic bacteria”—microorganisms that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into ethanol without fermenting sugars from cellulose or other types of biomass. The patents (#7,981,647 and #7,968,321), which were granted in the past month, cover various enzymatic mechanisms that Joule has engineered into cells to maximize their ethanol productivity.

Joule has received plenty of media attention since it started in 2007. The company is also applying its method to produce energy in the form of diesel fuel, which could power trucks and planes. Joule has previously been awarded patents in the area of diesel production. The overarching idea is to replace fossil fuels, but most biofuels makers have found “they can’t compete on a cost basis,” said Joule senior vice president Troy Campione, on a panel at our XSITE conference last month. Joule, of course, believes it is different.

The company has a pilot plant in Texas that has been producing ethanol and is slated to start producing diesel later this year. Joule says it has also signed a lease for land in New Mexico on which it is building a demonstration-scale plant that will begin operations next year.

While the new patents should help distance Joule from some of its competitors, they don’t necessarily get the company to commercialization any faster. George Church, the Harvard geneticist (and chairman of Joule’s technical advisory board), was quoted in the New York Times in March saying, “It’s not a totally obvious organism and they’ve changed it pretty radically, so it’s not clear they can protect everything by patents.”

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A New England energy giant is making big strides overseas. Devens, MA-based American Superconductor (NASDAQ: AMSC) said today it plans to acquire The Switch Engineering Oy, a power technologies firm based in Finland, for 190 million Euros (about $265 million) in cash and stock. The deal is expected to close by the end of August.

American Superconductor, which focuses on wind power and other renewable energy technologies, says the acquisition will make money immediately and will support the firm’s growth to $1 billion in annual revenue by 2014. The Switch makes power converter systems, permanent magnet generators, and other equipment for wind turbine manufacturers in China, Europe, Korea, and the U.S. The Finnish company made a profit of about $15 million on $179 million in revenue in calendar year 2010.

AMSC’s fiscal year 2009 (ending March 31, 2010) was its first full year of profitability, thanks in large part to its wind power business. The company says it expects “another record year of revenues and earnings in fiscal 2010,” which ends this month.

AMSC, which was founded in 1987 by four MIT professors (including current CEO and chairman Greg Yurek), initially entered the wind power market in 2006-2007. The company has a strong presence in Europe, China, and India.

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Northern Power System, the Barre, VT-based wind energy firm, has made some progress in its years-long pursuit of the lucrative market for utility-grade wind turbines. The company has made much of this progress here in Michigan.

Last month the company shipped its first prototype of a utility-scale, 2.2-megawatt wind turbine to Traverse City, MI-based Heritage Sustainable Energy. Northern Power produced the prototype with the aid of Merrill Technologies Group and a network of suppliers throughout the Great Lake State, company CEO John Danner said. His company has leased manufacturing facilities from Merrill in Saginaw, MI, for future turbine production as well.

The company, which a group of investors purchased out of Chapter 11 in June 2008 after its previous owner went broke, has been working for years to translate the design advantages of its smaller, 100-kilowatt turbines into the large turbines that are typically used on wind farms that supply energy to the grid. Within a few weeks, Danner said, the firm’s partner, Heritage, is expected to complete installation of the 2.2-megawatt prototype turbine at is Stoney Corners project in southern Missaukee County.

Northern Power, which got its start in the mid-1970s, was in the news earlier this month for its role in Michigan’s first large-scale wind turbine manufacturing effort. The company’s turbine production in the state was held out as an example of Michigan’s progress in building up its wind energy sector, which Governor Jennifer Granholm said was key to diversifying the state’s economy and creating clean technology jobs. For its part, Northern Power could employ as many as 137 works in Michigan by 2014, according to the state.

While Danner declined to offer specifics on when his company plans to begin full-scale production of its turbines in Michigan, he did offer some insights on why his company has chosen the state as a hub for its utility-scale wind energy business. One plus he touched on was the state’s standard that 10 … Next Page »

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Last week’s tech industry news underscored the diversity of innovation in the San Diego area. We’ve got it all wrapped up for you here, from satellite-based Internet service to electric motorcycles, Web 2.0, and electromagnetic railguns.

—Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat (NASDAQ: VSAT) will be launching its first satellite, ViaSat-1, in mid-May as part of the company’s strategy to diversify by providing satellite-based Internet service to customers in rural and low-density areas throughout the U.S. ViaSat’s Tom Moore, who is a co-founder and CEO of ViaSat subsidiary WildBlue Communications, told me that ViaSat sees additional opportunities for satellite-based Internet service in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.

—San Diego’s high-tech industry added 500 jobs from 2008 to 2009, for a total of 111,000, according to a nationwide “cybercities” report issued last week by TechAmerica. San Diego was one of only seven cybercities to add jobs in 2009, which is the latest year that data is available. San Diego’s largest high-tech sector was R&D and testing labs, which employed 28,600 workers in 2009, according to TechAmerica. Telecommunications services followed, with 8,600 workers, and computer systems design and related services was third, with 16,500 workers. San Diego ranked first in the United States in consumer electronics manufacturing, with 2,900 jobs.

—General Atomics, the private government contractor in San Diego, has been participating in efforts by Office of Naval Research to develop an … Next Page »

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Helix Wind, which appeared to be in critical condition last year when Scott Weinbrandt replaced co-founder Ian Gardner as CEO, says it’s now searching for a new CEO to step in for Weinbrandt, according to a regulatory filing. Weinbrandt, a former computer industry executive, left the company and its board on Dec. 2. The tiny renewable energy company, which makes vertical axis wind turbines, also disclosed in a recent filing that it has almost 701 million shares outstanding. Helix, which trades on the over-the-counter market, disclosed last month that it had an accumulated deficit of nearly $41.7 million as of Sept. 30 and negative cash flow, raising doubts about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The San Diego Union-Tribune noted the company’s increasing troubles in a post today.

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San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies has raised another $6 million in venture capital, according to an amended IPO registration form the company filed with government regulators Friday. Fallbrook, which is developing an innovative continuously variable transmission (CVT) for a variety of applications, originally filed for an IPO in February and revised its S-1 form previously in May.

In its latest amended filing, which was reported over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal, Fallbrook discloses lower revenues, pushes out plans to expand into some new markets, and outlines a variety of new partnership agreements.

The company, which bills its CVT transmission as a greener and more fuel-efficient technology, plans to introduce one CVT transmission specifically for automotive accessory drives (such as alternators and air conditioners) and another developed for small wind turbines next year. The company says it has pushed out its plans to enter the lawn care market, from 2011 to 2012, and is developing a CVT transmission for use by electric vehicles in 2013.

Fallbrook launched the first version of its NuVinci transmission for bicycles in 2007. In its filing Friday, the company says its total revenue fell by 32 percent in the first six months of this year, as Fallbrook began phasing out its original N171 for an improved second-generation model, the N360. In a press release scheduled for release at the Eurobike trade show, which is set to begin tomorrow in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Fallbrook says its N360 design is lighter and smaller, and now fits within the frame drop-out for the rear wheel.

With its planned expansion into other markets, such as automotive accessory drives, Fallbrook says it has reached a series of partnership agreements with other companies, including a deal with a Chinese bus manufacturer and a Chinese maker of power train auto parts.

With the most recent Series E venture investment, entities associated with Robeco, the investment arm of Rabobank of The Netherlands, have a 24.6 percent stake in Fallbrook. The Santa Barbara, CA, cleantech venture firm NGEN Partners increased its ownership from 23.7 percent to 24.2 percent. Both groups provided $2 million in additional venture funding, as did a third, unidentified venture investor.

The company says it has raised a total of $62 million to develop its core CVT technology and develop products for various markets, and has a combined total of 365 patents and patent filings protecting its technology in the United States and around the world.

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TPI Composites, an Arizona-based maker of wind turbine blades, plans to open a new facility in Fall River, MA, as soon as January, according to a report in the Boston Globe. The plant will be a development hub for TPI’s facilities in Rhode Island, Iowa, Mexico, and China, the report says. The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has confirmed it will provide a $250,000 grant to TPI, contingent on the jobs expected to be created at the new plant (about 30 when it opens).

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One of the giants of the New England cleantech scene is making waves—or should I say, wind. Devens, MA-based American Superconductor (NASDAQ: AMSC) said today it has received a new order for 17 wind-turbine electrical control systems from Inox Wind, based in India. Financial details weren’t given, but the company is touting it as a significant development.

Normally this wouldn’t really be news for us—the Inox partnership itself isn’t new—but the order is the latest in a series of moves that signify AMSC’s rise to prominence in the global power technology scene. Last week, the company said it had paid $8 million in cash to acquire a 25 percent ownership stake in Blade Dynamics, a U.K.-based maker of wind-turbine blades. And in bigger news for the company, fiscal year 2009 was AMSC’s first full fiscal year of profitability. The majority of the company’s revenues—which have been growing from quarter to quarter for about the past three years—come from its wind power business.

American Superconductor first entered the wind market in 2006-2007 when it acquired Windtec, an Austrian wind turbine and electrical systems company. In 2008, the company scored a $450 million contract to make power converters for Sinovel Wind Corporation in China. In 2008, AMSC also licensed its wind turbine design to Ghodawat Industries in India (which also placed a $20 million order for electrical control systems from AMSC last April). So Inox is AMSC’s second big wind turbine manufacturing customer in India.

AMSC was founded in 1987 by four MIT professors, including current CEO and chairman Greg Yurek. Before getting heavily into renewable energy and wind power, the company was best known for making high-temperature superconductor wire, which can carry more power than copper wire and can be applied to various smart-grid problems. AMSC has approximately 800 employees and has a strong presence in China and India.

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If you’ve crossed the U.S. Midwest by car recently, as I have, you may have noticed a new kind of crop sprouting up amidst the corn and soybeans: wind turbines, thousands of them. Now, some of the electricity those turbines produce will be going to Google Energy, a new entity set up by the Mountain View, CA, search giant last year to participate in wholesale energy markets.

Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations, announced on the company’s blog today that Google Energy has signed a 20-year agreement to buy 114 megawatts of power from NextEra Energy Resources, which operates 9,000 wind turbines across 17 states. Google is buying power from a specific group of 100 GE-manufactured NextEra turbines in Story County and Hardin County in central Iowa. (Story County’s largest city is Ames, home of Iowa State University.)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has been striving since 2007 to become carbon-neutral by making its facilities more energy-efficient (it said last year that it had already cut its energy use in half). The company is also turning to renewable energy sources such as the solar panels at its Mountain View headquarters and hydropower from the Columbia River in Oregon, and has been buying carbon offsets. Hoelzle said that the electricity Google Energy is purchasing from NextEra is “enough to supply several data centers.”

However, the wind turbines in Iowa won’t directly power Google facilities, which are too far away to efficiently transmit all the energy. Instead, Google has structured the deal in a way that it hopes will benefit the broader renewable-energy movement. Google will resell the electricity produced by the turbines on the spot market, while at the same time retiring the renewable energy credits, or RECs, associated with the project.

RECs are independently traded entities often bought by organizations seeking carbon offsets. They guarantee that the energy from a given project is produced in a way that does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. They were, at one time, envisioned as a key source of financing for renewable energy projects, but the recession has dampened demand for the certificates.

Buying the actual power from the Iowa wind farms, rather than just the “naked” RECs, has a bigger benefit, Google said, in that it will provide NextEra with a guaranteed customer, allowing it to build more wind farms. “The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy,” Hoelzle said on the Google blog. “We’ve been excited about this deal because taking 114 megawatts of wind power off the market for so long means producers have the incentive and means to build more renewable energy capacity for other customers.”

NextEra, which has its headquarters in Juno Beach, FL, says its growth has been built on such contracts. “We are thrilled to welcome Google Energy to our growing list of customers and appreciate their support of emission-free, renewable energy,” said Mike O’Sullivan, NextEra’s senior vice president of development, in a press release today. “With the support of customers like Google Energy, we’ve built our wind fleet from fewer than 500 megawatts a decade ago to more than 7,600 megawatts—the largest fleet in North America today.”

But the deal isn’t entirely an act of charity. It also gives Google a way to hedge against future hikes in energy prices. If Google can sell the Iowa wind power on the spot market for more than it’s paying NextEra, it will make a profit on the contract, offsetting higher energy costs elsewhere.

“While we are happy to be purchasing renewable energy as part of our environmental commitment, this is also a structure that makes long term financial sense for Google,” the company said in a statement. “Through the long term purchase of renewable energy at a predetermined price, we’re partially protecting ourselves against future increases in power prices. This is a case where buying green makes business sense.”

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Somerville, MA-based Second Wind started with the intention of measuring which way the wind blows. And in the last few years, it has learned that there’s more than one reason to do that.

The company formed in 1980 with the aim of collecting wind data to determine which sites were ideal for developing wind farms. It came out five years later with a system for measuring the output of a cluster of wind turbines as a single power plant.

In 2007, Second Wind launched its Triton Sonic Wind Profiler device, which uses what it calls “sodar” technology to capture wind data and pinpoint the optimal sites for developing wind farms. (Wade first wrote about the company in December 2007 when it received $4 million in second round funding from Good Energies.) But in its three years on the market, the device has evolved to serve wind farms that are already operational in a number of ways, says CEO Larry Letteney.

“Triton is closing the information loop for wind farm operating,” he says. “You can know what wind is coming in, how to set up turbines, and what energy is coming out.” In June, the company officially hit 1 million hours of wind data logged with the Triton, which functions by emitting a sound into the atmosphere, and monitoring the changes in that sound over time. It’s packed with sensors that can measure barometric pressure, temperature, and wind speeds and directions—all at varying heights, Letteney says. And it operates without having to be monitored regularly.

The new and emerging functions for the Triton device include diagnostics and near-term forecasting of weather and pressure conditions. Wind farm operators often see a few turbines remain static while the others are moving, Letteney says. The data from the Triton helps them determine what factors are shuttering individual devices and then fix the problems. “It’s like getting a checkup,” he says.

The Triton also brings wind farm operators information that can help them adjust turbines to capitalize on immediate conditions. Wind farm operators often struggle with knowing what will happen at their sites in the next 15 to 20 minutes, Letteney says. The information the Triton collects can be … Next Page »

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Michigan State University spinout InPore Technologies makes a particle that, when mixed with other materials, makes plastic stronger, lighter, cheaper, and more flame-retardant. Yeah. I know. Doesn’t sound all that sexy. It really is, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

First, the reason the East Lansing, MI-based company recently earned a $100,000 paycheck from the Great Lakes Entrepreneur’s Quest business plan competition is not only because it has great technology to sell, but because it has people who know how to clearly describe, in the words of CEO Gerry Roston, “the story.”

The reviewers for the competition who singled InPore out of the pack said the company knew what it was doing and why they were doing it. In turn, what attracted Roston to the company about 18 months ago was its founding scientist, MSU chemistry professor Thomas Pinnavaia.

“This is the single most critical thing for any startup,” Roston says. “It’s not the technology, it’s not the money, it’s the people.”

Nothing against academics in general, Roston says, but, for a professor, Pinnavaia “is an extremely personable, extremely approachable person. He’s passionate about what he does, he’s open to learning from others, he wants to learn from others, he wants to make this happen. And that enthusiasm is the other thing which really drew me to the business.”

So, according to Roston, who has made a career out of mentoring early-stage companies, the key to tech startup success is to have a plan and people you can believe in. Then, of course, there’s the technology itself. It’s a small thing, really—on the nanoscale, actually. But, warns Roston, don’t call InPore a nanotechnology company. That “nano” prefix is the “kiss of death” in the marketplace these days, he says.

The company’s proprietary particle goes by the brand name Silapore. Most of the plastics you interact with everyday—from your car to the phone or computer you’re reading this story on—contain fillers that do different jobs. They make the product stiffer or add color, for example. But the fillers, themselves, can also make the plastics weaker. Silapore particles, according to InPore, have such a unique morphology—or, arrangement, texture, or topography—that it makes products stiffer, stronger, lighter, and even flame-retardant and scratch-resistant.

The scratch-resistance and lighter weight make the material attractive to the automotive … Next Page »

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In a joint press conference today with Governor Deval Patrick at the Massachusetts State House, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said his department has approved a scaled-down version of the long-delayed Cape Wind project at Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Salazar said that the revised project approved by the department will consist of 130 wind turbines rather than 170, that the turbines will be moved farther away from Nantucket Island than originally proposed, and that additional seabed surveys will be conducted before construction to ensure that any as-yet-undiscovered submerged archaeological resources are protected. Some of the changes were made specifically to reduce the visual impact of the wind farm from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport; deceased Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy was a longtime opponent of the project. The wind farm, first proposed in 2001 by private developer Cape Wind Associates, is expected to supply enough power for Nantucket Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and much of Cape Cod and create several hundred construction jobs. “This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast,” Salazar said at the press conference.

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Wilbraham, MA’s FloDesign Wind Turbine will get $3 million in funding from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, as it plans to expand its operation in the state with the addition of a new corporate headquarters and product development center in Waltham, the state announced today. FloDesign, which is developing wind turbines with technology reminiscent of jet engines, will keep its Wilbraham location as an aerodynamics research center. The new funding will come in the form of a $600,000 convertible grant that could give the Clean Energy Center an equity stake in the company, $1.7 million from the center’s Renewable Energy Trust, and a $700,000 five-year forgivable loan, which requires FloDesign to add 150 jobs in the state over three years and maintain them for another two years. Wade caught up with FloDesign’s new CEO in January, days after the company announced it had raised $35 million in Series B funding.

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Since June we’ve been tracking monthly figures in bigger venture deals for our two other coverage areas, Seattle and Boston, thanks to data provided to us by our New York-based partner CB Insights, a private company intelligence platform. The company also supplies us monthly with a list of smaller deals under $1 million—what we dub as “under the radar”—in Southern California, the Northwest, and New England, which we like to examine for trends in startup investing.

This was the first month that enough San Diego-area companies made the list to merit a story, which could signal that pint-sized deals are picking up for the region’s startups. There were four San Diego deals, ranging from $201,132 to $689,500. Three were equity-based offerings, and a fourth was debt-related. While these four deals were all relatively small, they definitely signal bigger things to come, as three of the four transactions reflected pieces of larger planned offerings.

The startups that nabbed the funding cover the energy, medical devices, pharmaceutical, and agriculture spaces. That’s right, agriculture. Yes, it’s not typically an industry that we’d cover, but I kept the $201,132 in equity, options, and warrants for San Diego-based Cibus Global on the list because of the way the company has been innovating in the area of crop trait development.

Rather than using traditional genetic engineering technologies of introducing foreign traits to crops, Cibus works within plants’ own genomes to introduce genetic traits through the natural process of gene repair. I’m interested to see where they go, particular because their February deal was just a piece of a planned $2.6 million offering, according to the SEC filing.

The biggest deal on the list was $689,500 of a planned $1 million equity offering for Carlsbad, CA-based Catadon Systems. They’re engineering towers that raise wind turbines higher into the air without the need for cranes or concrete, according to the company’s website. The higher a turbine can be placed off the ground, the more wind energy it can capture, making wind investments pay off faster, the website explains.

The sole debt deal went to San Diego-based Aethlon Medical, in a $600,000 transaction that included options and warrants. Aethlon is developing a diagnostic and therapeutic device for infectious diseases. Their Hemopurifier is a cartridge that removes viral pathogens from the blood and can be used with portable pumps or dialysis machines.

If you ask me, these under-the-radar lists can be nicknamed the stealth lists, due to the fact that they almost always include at least one company that’s too stealthy to have a website. La Jolla’s Ampla Pharmaceuticals took on that role for the February list. The only information I could gather on them was from the website of their investor, Integra Ventures of Seattle. Integra’s website describes Ampla as a “stealth mode biotechnology company,” and says that Advent International and Crabtree Ventures also back the company. Ampla pulled in $295,271 of a planned $1.2 million equity-based offering.

I’m interested to see when these companies will complete their offerings, or roar out of stealth mode. In the meantime, check out the consolidated list below of February under-the-radar deals.

*includes some options and warrants

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Medford, OR-based UpWind Solutions, a provider of operations and maintenance services for utility-scale wind projects, has raised $10 million out of a $29 million round of Series B preferred stock, according to a regulatory filing. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the SEC form lists Michael Linse of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mark Lewis of MissionPoint Capital as directors of the firm. UpWind is led by president and founder Bo Thisted. The company works with wind energy project developers and owners over the lifetime of their turbines or wind farms.

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Viryd Technologies, a wind turbine technology startup spun out last May by San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies, has secured a $5 million investment that includes a Chinese maker of automotive components.

Viryd was founded near Austin, TX, to integrated Fallbrook’s proprietary transmission technology in power-generating wind turbines for the renewable energy. Unlike a conventional transmission, which uses a set of gears with specific fixed-speed ratios, Fallbrook’s continuously variable transmission uses a planetary mechanism that “shifts” seamlessly as a drive train accelerates and decelerates.

Fallbrook CEO William Klehm tells me that Viryd shares many of the true-believer angel investors who invested $25 million in Fallbrook after it was founded in 1998, and who joined in the $29.4 million raised last year in Fallbrook’s first round of venture funding. Neither Viryd nor Fallbrook has identified its individual investors, although Klehm has previously disclosed that Fallbrook’s angels include Gary Jacobs, son of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, and Gary Weiss, whose Weiss Group provides consulting and executive search services.

Viryd is announcing today it has raised another $5 million from its existing investors and China’s Ningbo Shentong Auto Decorations. Shentong also will name a representative to Viryd’s board of directors. The Texas company raised $5M from  individual investors last year. Viryd and Shentong Group plan to form a joint venture to manufacture wind turbines for markets worldwide, and especially in Asia and China, where the market for renewable energy is just emerging.

Viryd says the design of its drive train enables the rotors of a wind turbine to rotate more efficiently at any wind speed. Its design also allows for the use of an inexpensive generator that can be connected directly to the utility grid without power electronics and inverters, according to the company. Fallbrook, meanwhile, continues to develop its NuVinci continuously variable transmission for the automotive market, saying its transmission without gears operates more efficiently and at lower cost than conventional transmissions.

Viryd’s deal with Ninbo Shentong Auto could bear implications for Fallbrook as well. Based in Yuyao City in mainland China, the company’s customers include Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, FAW-Volkswagen, Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen AutoMobile (DPCA) and Beijing Mercedes-Benz (Daimler Chrysler).

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Wilbraham, MA-based FloDesign Wind Turbine, whose radical jet-engine-like design for a new form of wind turbine has whisked it from the world of student business plan competitions to national prominence in under three years, says it has raised a big chunk of new cash and installed a new chief executive.

In an announcement today, FloDesign said it closed a $34.5 million Series B funding round in December. The backers include California-based Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers—the firm that supplied most of FloDesign’s Series A round—as well as three new investors, Goldman Sachs, Technology Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners. The latest round brings FloDesign’s total funding to about $40 million, not counting an $8.3 million Department of Energy grant awarded to the company last fall.

FloDesign also said that Stanley Kowalski, the company’s founder and original CEO, has taken the position of vice president, and that the CEO role has been filled by newcomer Lars Andersen. A 20-year veteran of the power generation and renewable energy industries, Andersen was previously president of the China operations of Vestas, the Danish firm that is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines.

Andersen’s job will be to manage FloDesign’s transition from “a research and development organization to a leading renewable energy manufacturing company,” the firm said in its announcement. It’s commonplace, when manfacturing startups are nearing the commercialization stage and require more capital, for investors and directors to look for a new chief executive with more business development experience. That appears to be what’s happening at FloDesign, although neither Kowalski nor Andersen, who is traveling today, were available to comment on the transition.

Andersen trained as an engineer at the the Engineering College of Aarhus in Denmark and has held positions at ABB Power Generation in Switzerland and engineering consulting firm Black and Veatch in the US. In a prepared statement, Andersen said “I am very pleased with the prominent venture investors who are backing this company. It will be an exciting journey to build a world‐class company applying leading edge technology in the wind sector.”

FloDesign remains secretive about its wind-turbine designs—it hasn’t shown off its latest turbines in public, and the company’s website is password-protected. (A staffer once told me this was largely due to fears of intellectual property theft among partners at Kleiner Perkins.) But if the company has stayed true to its early design concepts, then its turbines feature tube- or cage-like enclosures that supposedly make them more efficient at extracting energy from wind than conventional open-fan turbines. The best open-fan turbines can convert only about 59 percent of the kinetic energy in wind into electricity, a phenomenon known as the Betz Limit.

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[Editor's Note: Erik Mellgren, a noted Swedish business and technology journalist who worked with Xconomy as an Innovation Fellow in 2008, sends this article from Stockholm, just as the United Nations climate change conference is winding down in nearby Copenhagen, Denmark.]

Massachusetts startup FloDesign Wind Turbine was singled out by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu as an example of a groundbreaking new energy technology company when he visited United Nations conference on climate change earlier this week.

Chu also challenged his Danish hosts and told the audience that today’s wind energy technology simply isn’t good enough, if wind power is to have any impact on CO2 emissions. Denmark may be the world leader in wind energy technology at present, but the United States will take over the leadership in the future, Chu said.

His presented his vision of the next generation of wind turbines and said that they needed to be highly efficient, ultra compact, and low in cost. He then pointed to the Wilbraham, MA, company FloDesign and its turbines, which differ radically from today’s ordinary propeller-like windmills. The company’s design looks a bit like a jet engine, with a multi-bladed turbine enclosed in a shroud.

FloDesign was one of 37 companies across the United States, and six in Massachusetts, to win R&D grants through the Energy Department’s ARPA-E competition in October; it will receive $8.3 million.

The Danish wind energy community has already reacted to Dr. Chu’s comment, according to an article in the engineering magazine Ingeniøren. The article quotes Flemming Rasmussen, researcher at the prestigious Risø Institute. He says that even though the FloDesign concept may give a higher efficiency, it will probably not be competitive against today’s traditional designs, the reason being that the new design requires far more material in its construction.

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Massachusetts officials welcomed the groundbreaking today of the Wind Technology Testing Center at the Boston Autoport in Charlestown. Funded through a $25 million stimulus grant from the Department of Energy, the center will be the first in North America with the ability to test blades for commercial wind turbines that are longer than 50 meters. “The clean energy sector continues to grow in Massachusetts, and this wind technology testing center will be a tremendous boost,” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement. “Testing the next generation of wind turbines here will make Massachusetts a hub for the research and development of the fastest-growing energy source in the world.”

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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.

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