High Heat & Enthusiasm In Clean Tech

Seeking The Future, Now, At Three Trade Shows & A Seminar

Last week I attended both the InterSolar show at Moscone in San Francisco and then later in the week the Cleantech Open National Investors Conference in San Jose. In addition, the previous week I went to a graywater seminar hosted by the BuiltItGreen.org.
Most disappointing was InterSolar. From a 10,000 foot view above Mosconi, solar technology still comes from Germany, plus a few isolated spots in the US. Meanwhile, China is striving to drive photo voltaic (PV) cells and panels to the commodity level. Besides, right now China is its own best market.From the US vendor perspective, it was a pick-up-truck-driving contractors show, with solar system installation the #1 business; “We got panels; We got mounting systems.”
While InterSolar was 200 watts brighter than the nearby Semicon IC show, it there was little enthusiasm. Gone was the solar evangelism and solar fervor. Totally missing was anticipation for the next-big-thing in the industry. This is probably because the global solar industry is entirely dependent on government subsidies and in the current Western economy, you can pretty much guess that subsidy action is waning.
High Heat: A day later the Cleantech Open National Investors Conference was a ferment of enthusiasm and hope. Here the halls were alive with ideas, entrepreneurs, investment angels, VC and “future-tech” executives from firms such as Chevron to Gundfos pumps to Walmart.
Leading off, author Geoffrey Moore exclaimed an analogy, comparing energy to healthcare in complexity. The difficulty for an energy start-up, he said, is that the buyer needs a complex system, not a product. Whereas most start-ups must aim for serious pain with their product.
As if to prove him wrong Reenst Lesemann of Columbia Power Technologies, talked about progress in ocean-wave energy converters for early adopter utilities in the EU. Other clean tech start-ups presenting included Grant Ricketts with a software tool to track and measure results and Derek Zobrist with a $2,000 valve for reducing energy consumption in hotel and apartment water heating systems.

The overall investors-choice for the conference was Puralytics, which designs and manufactures a water purification system that eliminates organic and inorganic material, including most toxic waste, heavy metals and the growing list of synthetic endocrine substances in drinking water. According to CEO Mark Owen, Puralytics is, “Way ahead of the FDA on the endocrine destroying substances now found in American drinking water.” [Puralytics molecular diagram: Direct disassociation of contaminants by high intensity UV light, including atrazine, amoxicillin, DEET, and all estrogenic chemicals.]
The previous week, at the other end of the technology scale was the gathering of graywater professionals. Graywater systems, most easily understood as reusing laundry water for garden irrigation, became legal and permit free for California homeowners with a change to the building code in 2008.
-doug