Next week, New York City. The Cleantech Venture Forum III starts on Tuesday afternoon Oct 21 with some pre-conference workshops. I'll be presenting information about Federal technology resources. The conference gets into full swing on Wed.

Back in March, we thought announcements were imminent. (See UFTO Note - T&D R&D Gaining Attention, 21 Mar 2003.) Little did we realize the kinds of struggles that would ensue internally in DOE over which people, programs and budgets would be won or lost by which office. The new office started its work nonetheless, judging from numerous appearances by its chief.

Additional megawatt-hours (MWH) can be obtained at low cost during peak demand periods from gas turbines and combined cycle power plants by injecting externally compressed, humidified, and heated air into a combustion turbine (CT) up-stream of combustors. This novel approach is denoted as CT-HAI, (Humidified Air Injection) for simple cycles and CC-HAI for combined cycles.

The HydroMax technology uses any carbon source including low sulfur and high sulfur coal to produce electricity, hydrogen and syngases which can be used as fuel for gas-fired power plants or converted into diesel, jet fuel, gasoline or ammonia. Alternate carbon sources include petroleum coke, municipal waste, biomass and shredded tires.

The same baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) sold in grocery stores and used for a 101 things around the home is also one of the best solutions to scrub emissions from coal-fired power plants. Purification of flue gas emissions using sodium bicarbonate has always been recognized as a highly effective process for removing SO2, SO3, NOx and heavy metal compounds from flue gas.

There are dozens of plasma companies, often focused on medical waste, and some on power (with coal or some waste stream as the feedstock). (See footnote) Usually these are hot plasmas, and tend to be expensive due to the materials problems at high temperature. In a plasma, sometimes called the 4th state of matter, material is very highly ionized by an electrical arc discharge.

In early May, Caterpillar announced the formation of a new spin-off company called Firefly Energy Inc., whose purpose is to complete the development and commercialization of a dramatically improved lead acid battery technology. The entire research program, people and technology have been transferred out of CAT into the new startup after several years of in-house research.

This event was a real eye opener. The energy efficiency crowd is on a roll, very much back from near death. These are the champions of Energy Efficiency (EE) and Demand Response (DR, not to be confused with distributed resources) who push for equal treatment of the demand side "resource" alongside generation and supply.

DOE's new organization for hydrogen and fuel cells is in place. Steve Chalk heads the program, and has about 20 direct reports for the many sub-areas. The org chart and key contacts list are available here.

The surge of interest in cleantech was noteworthy. Many new faces were there, some of them very prominent VC firms whose usual sectors of IT and telecom have lost their lustre. These investors seem to be checking out energy tech and cleantech to see what the opportunities are, and whether it might represent a "next big thing".

There are a number of fascinating new developments in the world of solar photovoltaic cells, which represent major shifts from the usual crystalline silicon cell based on semiconductor technology, which supplies as much as 80% of the market today (referring to wafers sliced from large single crystal or polycrystalline ingots). Here is a quick overview.

Researchers have been working on a process that uses sunlight to produce hydrogen by splitting water directly. To understand photoelectrolysis, think of a PV cell underwater, where the electrochemical energy produced is immediately used to electrolyze water, instead of creating an external current.

The Dept. of Energy will announce, perhaps as early as next week, the creation of a new office for T&D reporting directly to the Secretary, as recommended in the National Transmission Grid Study* done last year. The Office of Electricity Transmission and Distribution will start with a budget of $85 million.

For standby diesels to start reliably, they need to be kept warm. Standard practice (for 200 kw to 2.5MW gensets) is to attach an electric resistance heater to maintain a temperature of 100-140 degF. As a standard practice, nearly all engines have such heaters, installed either by the engine manufacturer or the distributor.