In a previous post, I wrote about the New Energy Symposium held last month in New York City. The first day of the event featured a startup quick pitch competition, and the three winners of the competition were recently announced.

They are, in alphabetical order, Dynamo Micropower, (more…)

It’s easy to become discouraged about cleantech when headlines focus on one company after another that fails to make it work. Frequently the issue is not technology, but rather management, the supply chain, or the business model. Cleantech companies often have the added burden of creating value where there was none before. Being visionary is riskier than (more…)

Conermex, one of the largest solar and wind power companies in Mexico, predicts that Mexico will double their capacity of solar within 2012, from 6 to 12 MW.

Mexico’s National Solar Energy Association (ANES) says that Mexico could possibly generate all their electricity with solar power in the future. (more…)

Isentropic is a UK company that has developed an energy storage system called Pumped Heat Electricity Storage (PHES).

Isentropic owns several international and U.S. patents and applications. U.S. Application Publication No. 2010/0257862 (’862 Application) describes and claims the PHES technology. (more…)

“Fast” DC electric vehicle chargers that can charge up to 80 percent of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) in under 20 minutes are starting to sprout up in the U.S. Consumers are expected to be willing to pay up to the price of a movie ticket to wait minutes instead of hours to charge a vehicle. (more…)

New research at Concordia University is bringing the world one step closer to cleaner energy. It is now possible to extend the length of time a battery like enzyme can store energy from seconds to hours, as shown in a study published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society. Concordia Associate Professor László Kálmán — along with his colleagues (more…)

By spending years in the flywheel industry, Jim Fiske learned a great deal about grid-scale energy storage and its true requirements. After determining that flywheels were not the best option, he and the investor of his flywheel company founded Gravity Power. Gravity Power’s technology has the potential to change energy storage worldwide. (more…)

Efficient energy storage is key because we need to be able to access power when the sun is not out and the wind is not blowing.

A recent TED talk delved into this subject. The lecture was delivered by MIT’s Donald Sadoway, who explains in plain English how large-scale batteries that store renewable energy work. (more…)

About one fifth of the world’s population lacks access to electricity. It is one of biggest economic obstacles for people in developing countries, but one that could mean opportunities for a clean energy beginning with alternative energy. (more…)

One of the most promising aspects of energy storage is that it’s used to make an existing system more efficient. If you think of the grid as the system, then energy storage can help make generation, transmission, distribution, and even customer energy use more efficient.

How many different systems are there? The grid is the (more…)