ICE 2009 Finalists' Business Summaries

ARRIBA Solar Solar
ARRIBA Solar is a metrology and process control company whose mission is to accelerate solar PV to grid parity, by providing valuable, real-time measurement of the composition and thickness of solar cells in the manufacturing environment. Regardless of technology (thin-film, c-Si), Solar PV manufacturers must reduce the cost per watt of their solar panels. The ARRIBA Solar solution allows manufacturers to control and optimize their manufacturing processes and improve uniformity of thin-film characteristics; this results in increased panel efficiencies (closing the “lab-to-fab” efficiency gap), higher yields, longer uptime, and decreased material costs.

DyPol Fuel Cells
DyPol is a membrane engineering company using environmentally friendly chemicals and unique manufacturing processes to create novel, superior materials for key energy and industrial applications.

EGG-energy Storage
EGG-Energy presents an innovative business strategy that uses off-the-shelf technology to solve the problem of the continuing lack of power in peri-urban and rural Africa while cost-effectively abating green-house gas emissions.
Over 500 million Africans have no access to electricity; they rely on kerosene, an expensive, dangerous and pollutant alternative for their lighting needs. EGG-tech displaces this kerosene with cheaper, safer, and cleaner electricity based alternative, by tapping power at its source – the grid, a solar station, or a distributed power generation plant – and packaging it into small, light, rechargeable batteries that are rented to clients on an annual basis.

HydroCoal Coal
Coal is the world’s most abundant energy resource. It’s also the dirtiest; but only because it’s not used efficiently. When coal is gasified or liquefied, it can be made as clean as or cleaner than natural-gas. However, we couldn’t do this economically until now.
HydroCoal™ has solved the problem of gasifying and liquefying coal economically. By 2011, industrial natural-gas users world-wide can produce clean natural-gas substitutes at half the cost using our inexpensive, highly reliable, modular, “plug-and-play,” front-end gasification systems. By 2013, refiners can use our liquefaction systems to convert coal into $25.00/bbl syncrude, making $1.50/gallon gasoline a reality again.

InnoSepra Coal
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is potentially one of the most cost-effective option for carbon mitigation. InnoSepra has developed a breakthrough technology for carbon capture that needs 65% lower capital and can reduce the capture cost by more than 50% to less than $25/ton. Lower capture cost enables an immediate market opportunity worth more than $100 billion for using the captured CO2 for enhanced oil and gas recovery. This opportunity can provide more than $100 million in profits in 5-6 years for InnoSepra, can mitigate more than 50 million tons of CO2, and should not lead to an increase in the enduser power cost.

IntAct Labs Energy Efficiency
IntAct Labs is dedicated to solving problems at the intersection of water and energy. Currently 3% of our nation’s electricity is used to treat wastewater, though many polluters avoid treatment due to high costs. IntAct has developed a proprietary microbial fuel cell that can treat wastewater with zero energy input, promising substantially lower treatment costs and energy savings versus traditional technologies.

POWERleap Green Buildings/Sustainable Design
POWERleap has developed a flooring system that converts energy from human foot traffic into electricity. The system uses piezoelectric technology and advanced circuitry designed to generate, distribute and store electric energy. POWERleap recently filed a provisional patent to protect the design and utility of the system thereby making the product “patent pending”. Our initial market will be novelty applications where clients will use the system as an exhibit to attract and entertain their customers. These application venues range from dance floors to pedestrian concourses to sports stadiums.

Resolute Marine Energy Other: Wave Power
RME is developing wave energy converters (WEC) that generate clean energy from ocean waves. RME is experienced in the design, construction and deployment of WEC-based power systems for the offshore aquaculture industry and its current objective is to commercialize a WEC-powered seawater desalination system that can be deployed quickly and operates completely off-grid. By 2014, RME will serve 700,000 people in developing nations and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 78,000 tons/year (like taking 24,000 cars off the road). RME was recently named one of the top 100 innovators in the global marine technology industry by the Marine Technology Reporter.

The Paper Battery Company Storage
The company is commercializing conformable and scalable rechargeable energy storage sheets that can be structurally integrated into everyday objects to improve energy efficiency and reliability in select applications ranging from portable electronics to grid level. Leveraging established technologies in supercapacitors and roll-to-roll volume production processes the company will produce a fault-tolerant storage device with high cycle rate and high voltage in a thin form factor. Value proposition for first generation product is to bring significant productivity enhancements to users of specific portable medical electronics and power tools. Increased energy efficiencies at grid level will be delivered with the next generation, large format, distributed sheets providing networked, scalable storage capacity through multiple buildings or communities.

Velkess Inc.
Velkess Inc. has developed a novel flywheel energy storage systems that will, once in production, provide energy storage at less than 1/10th the cost and 2x the efficiency of the best currently available technologies (NaS Batteries). With its initial systems, Velkess intends to target electrical ancillary service markets where the device and generate an estimated $2.9 billion of value in the U.S. alone.
Velkess’s patent pending technology uses inexpensive materials and fabrication techniques to produce highly efficient energy storage systems based on novel Flexible Flywheel Rotor and Floating Rotor Electrostatic Motor Generator devices.
The Velkess system’s high efficiency and low capital cost will allow it to usher in a wholesale restructuring of electricity markets around greater efficiency and lower price points while enabling non-CO2 producing generation technologies to profitably gain share in energy markets.