February 5th, 2012

White House Pushes Green Button To Liberate Your Energy Data

Green Button-1

The future of easy home energy monitoring may be a little bit closer, thanks to a government initiative designed to allow consumers direct access to their energy consumption data.

The White House’s new Green Button gives utilities a way to simplify and standardize sharing usage statistics with their customers via a one-click download. Two California providers, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric, already launched the feature, adding what is literally a green button to their websites. Utility companies in other regions are expected to implement it within the next year. Customers can click the button to download their personal usage information in one place. → Read More

January 3rd, 2012

Marine Solar Cells Make The Most Of Sun And Waves

MSC medium shot from above

In an unusual hybrid, British industrial designer Phil Pauley created Marine Solar Cells that harness energy from both the sun and water.

The web of energy generators capture energy off-shore, using a combination of floating photovoltaics and natural buoyancy displacement. Thanks to the reflective nature of water, the solar component’s efficiency is up to 20% greater than it would be land-locked. → Read More

October 17th, 2011

Facebook, NRDC & Opower To Partner On Energy-Saving Social App

Opower-Logo_RGB_-2_inches

Facebook, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and clean tech startup Opower are today announcing a partnership on a new social networking-based energy application that will help consumers monitor, improve and compare their home’s energy usage with their friends and other Facebook users.

The app, designed to improve energy awareness, has the potential to combine the 800 million+ users on Facebook with Opower’s network of over 60 utility partners reaching 55 million U.S. households. However, the social app will start off with just a few participating utilities when it launches in early 2012.
→ Read More

September 2nd, 2011

Simple Energy And San Diego Gas & Electric Team Up To Encourage Conservation Through Gaming

simple-energy-logo

2011 Boulder TechStars graduate Simple Energy is teaming up with San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) to help the utility engage its customers in energy conservation efforts.

To accomplish this, Simple Energy is running an energy saver contest that offers a social gaming experience with real-world rewards. → Read More

August 30th, 2011

EnergyHub Launches Energy Management System For Consumers

EnergyHub_logo-color-300

Today, EnergyHub launched its new, comprehensive, in-home energy management system for U.S. consumers. The system includes the EnergyHub Home Base, for centralized management of the electricity usage in the home, as well as The EnergyHub Thermostat, Sockets and Strips.

The Home Base also connects to the Web via Wi-Fi, allowing users to remotely manage individual components via Web-based or mobile applications that run on iOS and Android devices. → Read More

August 3rd, 2011

Harvesting Energy From Radio Signals: Two New Devices From Japan (Video)

rectenna

Gleaning electricity from radio signals isn’t super-efficient (or a new concept), but it’s possible technically. Two companies from Japan have recently come up with new devices that can do just that: one is harvesting energy from cell phone signals, the other uses a rectifying antenna (Rectenna) to produce energy. → Read More

May 13th, 2011

DIY Energy Monitor Mounts To Your Electric Meter

Remote electricity meters are interesting things. They essentially change the way you think about the juice flowing into your home by connecting to the potentially aged box in your basement and sensing the total energy usage in your home over time. The resulting stats are often quite enlightening and may help you make wiser energy-use decisions. → Read More

February 10th, 2011

Panasonic Shows Advanced Fuel Cell For Home Use

The news has become muted regarding <a href="fuel cells and their future role in energy supply in recent years, but it seems we’re getting there step by step: Panasonic today said that it has developed a new type of home-use fuel cell [press release in English], which is more efficient and cheaper than its existing solutions. → Read More

December 9th, 2010

New Fujitsu Device Harvests Energy From Both Heat And Light

Fujitsu today announced the development of a single device that’s capable of generating electricity from either heat or light. Previously, two devices had to be combined to generate electricity from these sources (through energy harvesting, energy can be derived from external sources like light, heat, vibrations, wind energy etc.). → Read More

October 25th, 2010

Even If Solar Grows 30X, It Will Only Be 4% Of America's Power Capacity

For all the talk about solar, the US market for solar power still has a long way to go before it makes a real dent in the country’s overall power capacity.

On Monday morning, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a major aggregator of green industry data released a few key projections: the US solar market is on track to grow 30x to 44 gigawatts by 2020 and could make up 4.3% of America’s total power capacity.

Of course, that path to 4.3% is not cheap. In order to get there, the US market will need to attract $100 billion in investment dollars. → Read More

August 27th, 2010

Solarve: Sanyo Shows World's First Solar Cell-Equipped Bus

Sanyo in Japan today announced [JP] what it says is the world’s first solar-cell-equipped public bus, the Solarve (which stands for Solar Vehicle). The bus was unveiled to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a Japanese transportation and logistics company called Ryobi [JP]. The Solarve is essentially a city bus with solar cells on top that generate power for its interior LED lights. → Read More

August 18th, 2010

Study Shows People Are Clueless About Energy Savings – Here's What Actually Works.

Quick, name one of the best things you can do to save energy at home. If you said “turning off the lights,” you’d be wrong. But you are not alone, most Americans say the same thing. A new survey shows most people have misconceptions about what works best to save energy.

Keeping lights off isn’t a bad idea in itself, but it has significantly less impact than swapping out the bulbs for more energy-efficient ones, says Shahzeen Attari, who published a paper on the survey. → Read More

August 17th, 2010

Alternative Energy: A Guide To Greening Your Home

Alternative energy is a growing market, and though many states offer tax credits, rebates, and other incentives to promote clean energy, it can still prove to be an expensive proposition.

It generally also requires plugging your energy source into the grid so you’re not left in the dark when the wind calms or the sun lingers behind clouds.

Here is a roundup of solutions that can help power a home. → Read More

August 5th, 2010

The Heat Is On: There Is Plenty Of Geothermal Energy Underground, We Just Need To Get To It

Most green technologies gather energy above ground, but like Jules Verne, we want to take you on A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Alright, not even close to the center, but deep down nonetheless, where naturally occurring hot water can be turned into clean energy above ground.

It is estimated that the amount of heat within 30,000 feet below the earth’s surface holds potentially 50,000 times more energy than all global oil and natural gas resources combined. According to the Geothermal Energy Association, up to 6,400 megawatts of new capacity could be created from the geothermal projects under development in the U.S. But getting to that energy is proving to be a challenge. → Read More

July 22nd, 2010

Caltech Awarded $122 Million to Create Fuel From Sunlight

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will award up to $122 million to create a Fuels form Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub led by the California Institute of Technology. The Hub’s goal is to develop ways to convert solar energy into chemical fuels and scale the technology for commercial use.

The project is in part inspired by the way plants produce energy, and will use artificial photosynthesis to turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into clean fuel. Researchers will be charged with finding ways to use technologies like light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers and separation membranes to transform sunlight into fuel, and the DOE aims to quickly turn the research into a viable product in the form of fuel that can go directly into cars without any additional processing. → Read More

July 21st, 2010

Terra-Gen Power Closes $1.2B in Financing to Build Nation's Largest Wind Farm

Terra-Gen Power announced closing $1.2 billion in construction financing and wind turbine orders. The company will build four wind power projects for the Alta Wind Energy Center in Kern County, California, for which Vestas-American Wind Technology will provide 190 turbines with a capacity of 570 megawatts. This is the largest number of wind turbines ever ordered for a single site in the U.S.

The Alta Wind Energy Center currently hosts 150 megawatt GE turbines and is expected to become the largest wind energy farm in the country with a capacity of 3,000 megawatts when completed. Terra-Gen has agreements with Southern California Edison to feed the energy into its grid. → Read More

July 20th, 2010

China now the world's top energy consumer (but the U.S. has become more energy efficient)

Is there a green movement in China? Maybe there ought to be, considering the numbers that have just come out. China is now the planet’s number one consumer of energy, overtaking the U.S. in the process. But at the same time, the U.S. has improved its energy efficient more so than China, meaning that the U.S. can get the same amount of work done while consuming less, say, coal or oil. → Read More

July 7th, 2010

Solar Impulse, the solar-powered airplane, tries to fly 24 hours

A solar-powered airplane, named the Solar Impulse, means to prove, once and for all, that harnessing the energy of the Sun is a good and practical idea. I mean, why would we try to capture some of the energy put out by a completely free nuclear reactor hanging in the sky? The plane took off from Switzerland a little bit ago, and will try to fly for 24 hours without stopping. Here’s hoping it’s a great success. → Read More

July 1st, 2010

CleanTech Venture Investments Total $2 Billion In Q2, Exits Reach More Than $8 Billion

Clean technology remains one of the hottest areas of venture funding. In the second quarter, cleantech venture investments worldwide totaled $2.02 billion across 140 companies, according to market research firm Cleantech Group and Deloitte. The numbers are in line with last quarter’s $2.04 billion, but 43% higher than one year ago.

Exits for the quarter totaled more than $8 billion globally, with $6 billion in cleantech M&A and $2.3 billion in cleantech IPOs. Tesla‘s $202 million IPO has been in the spotlight recently, but globally, the cleantech IPO market is concentrated in China, which grabbed $1.7 billion, 75 percent of the $2.3 billion raised worldwide in the past three months, and 12 of the 19 IPOs, though not all of those are venture backed. The biggest IPO of the quarter was China’s Origin Water on the Shenzen Stock Exchange, which raised $330 million. As a point of comparison, in the U.S. alone, IPOs across all sectors totaled $900 million in the second quarter. → Read More

June 29th, 2010

OPower to Expand to West Coast, Names iLike Founder Hadi Partovi to Advisory Board

Energy efficiency tracking company OPOWER added Hadi Partovi to its Technology Advisory Board and will open new offices in San Francisco next month. The Arlington, VA based company’s 10,000 square foot office in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood will have room for between 75 and 100 employees, a large part of which will be engineers. “We signed a two-year sublease because we hope to grow out of that space,” says CEO Daniel Yates.

In Partovi, OPOWER is getting an experienced advisor who will help build the company in its plans to grow from 95 to 150 employees total in the coming year. Partovi co-founded online music service iLike with his brother Ali, which they sold to MySpace, before leaving in April. Previously, Partovi founded Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $800 million. Partovi also worked on IE5. → Read More

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Media Armor — Received $1.53M in Series A funding from iNovia Capital and Greycroft Partners
2.10.2012
MyAutoZap.com — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Greycroft Partners — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Media Armor — Received $1.53M in Series A funding from iNovia Capital and Greycroft Partners
2.10.2012
rollApp — Received $243k in Series A funding from TMT Investments
2.7.2012
GCI Com — Received £10M in Unattributed funding from Business Growth Fund
2.9.2012
Stripe — Received $18M in Unattributed funding from Sequoia Capital
2.9.2012
BoardProspects — Received $650k in Seed funding from Mike Verrochi
2.9.2012
Greycroft Partners — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
iNovia Capital — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
TMT Investments — Invested in rollApp.
2.7.2012
Business Growth Fund — Invested in GCI Com.
2.9.2012
Sequoia Capital — Invested in Stripe.
2.9.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
MyAutoZap.com — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Repairhub — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
WineMob — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Alcoa Inc — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Media Strike — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
Pocketbook (Mobile app, coming soon) — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
CrunchBase