Michael Kanellos
Several companies–Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Sony, 3Com, OQO, Samsung–have tried to market simplified Internet computers as alternatives to PCs.
And to date, most of them have failed miserably. The public has just not bought into the vision.
CherryPal, the brainchild of longtime software exec Max Seybold, hopes to break the pattern, although it won’t be easy. The company in August will begin to sell a Linux-based computer that goes by the same name that will let users access the Internet, store data online and run the usual panoply of desktop applications (i.e. word processing, messaging, spreadsheets, etc.)
The difference? The CherryPal is about the size of a paperback book, it costs only $249 without monitor and only uses about two watts of power (not including the monitor) in active mode. By comparison, a regular desktop PC gobbles up about 114 watts in active mode while a notebook consumes about 19.5 watts.
Put another way, the CherryPal will only cost $1.58 to run for an entire year in some locations, he said. That’s 8 hours a day ever day of the year. Running a PC in the same manner would cost you about $35 or more a year, depending on where you live or what you do with your computer, according to calculations I did on my own. (I used 10.26 cents a kilowatt hour, the U.S. average earlier this year) Thus, as a replacement computer, it’s not a bad deal. You will save money on hardware and lower your power bill. If you are a school, particularly in an emerging market, the reduction in the power bill will be a boon.
Granted, the power consumption goes up when you add a monitor. A LCD screen consumes about 41 watts of power a year. While that keeps the power consumption well below the power required for a desktop, it boosts it past the level of a notebook. But at $249, it will cost less than a notebook. The device will be aimed at people who have a few PCs at home so I’m not counting the price of an extra monitor.
Seybold admits that PC-like devices have failed in the past, but for good reason. Larry Ellison’s network PC was a great idea in concept, he said, but it required broadband, and the broadband infrastructure was largely nonexistent back in 1998. Other PC-like devices lacked features. With the CherryPal, owners will be able to go anywhere on the Internet. They will also get 50GB of free storage through the company’s cloud computing service and access to various applications. Some applications will come loaded on the machine and others will be accessed through CherryPal’s site.
The CherryPal sports a PowerPC chip from Freescale rather than an Intel chip and will have 4GB of flash memory for storage, 256MB of memory and a 802.11g WiFi chip. The processor runs at around 400 MHz, a speed that hasn’t been seen in desktops in nearly a decade. The operating system, however, is fairly lightweight so the performance differences with a modern desktop will be comparable, he claimed
“You can compare it to a 2GHz processor,” he said.
Besides selling these to consumers, CherryPal will also sell the device to schools, both here and in emerging nations.
Will it work? It will be tough to get recognized in the market, but Seybold does have a point. Times have changed. Lower power consumption does give users a tangible benefit. Consumers have also, through smart phones, become acclimated to the idea of computing on non-Windows devices. NComputing, a start-up founded by EMachines founder Steve Dukker, is slowly but steadily selling more of its low-cost, low-energy computers.
On the other hand, the public has been highly skeptical of alternatives. That 400MHz processor won’t be an easy sell. Worse for CherryPal, if the device takes off, there’s not a lot to prevent the Samsungs of the world from making copycat devices. (Even PCs will compete if they must. Dell this week is selling a desktop with a 250GB drive for $299.) CherryPal’s main intellectual property revolves around the security protocol that connects the user to their free storage and applications that CherryPal provides them. The security protocol doesn’t even get activated when the user connnects to the Internet rather than their pod of free storage on CherryPal’s cloud.
Then again, the company has a whole bunch of pre-orders. It plans to sell the device through its web site at first and will later expand to Amazon.
Michael Kanellos
Planktos. No, it’s not where Aquaman was born. Planktos Science is a San Francisco-based company that wants to capture and sequester carbon dioxide in the ocean with iron filings and plankton. An earlier incarnation of the company was dissolved after disagreements among the management team. It also failed to gather funds.
Russ George, however, is trying again with Planktos Science. Because there is a lot of interest in the company, here is a republication of an email he sent out to reporters on the latest development and position of Planktos Science:
“It’s the tip of the dry ice berg
“I have read some of the many news reports on the ocean acidification and reef crisis that are presently extant. I beg to differ with the position that reducing our global carbon footprint will help save our ocean bathing beauties, the reefs. It’s not that I don’t fully support reducing our carbon footprint, I am rather more concerned about the role of the present deadly dose of anthropogenic CO2 already in the air on its way to our surface ocean waters. Those hundreds of billions of tonnes of anthropogenic CO2, the bulk of which we’ve prescribed and put en route in the past 75 years, is slowly dissolving into the surface ocean. By most accounts CO2 in the atmosphere takes on the order of 200 years to equilibrate with the surface ocean. Hence the pH drop we’ve been recording is just the proverbial tip of the dry-iceberg.
“As the surface ocean absorbs the rest of this deadly dose, regardless of whether we emit more which we surely are doing, the acidification process already destined to occur is more than sufficient to change ocean ecology in far wider and disastrous fashion than merely scalding the bathing beauties at the shore. In fact the devastating effects CO2 has on the ocean is not proceeding only via H2O+CO2=H2CO3 (carbonic acid), there is a secondary reaction wherein CO2 is enhancing the greeness of the planets dry lands. There is is a major benefit our high and rising CO2 delivers to droughty grasses who are losing less water via evapotranspiration, remaining green and growing bushier each spring, and as such are superior ground cover thus reducing topsoil loss in the wind. Tragically that dust in the wind is the major source of vital mineral micronutrients for the open ocean. Prophetically it seems, all we really are is dust in the wind.
“So as our reef beauties cry out and dissolve like Dorothy’s wicked witch in our acidifying oceans, the acidification will certainly continue for at least another century unabated even if we never emit another molecule of fossil CO2 into the air. At the same time as the oceans suffer this chemical shock treatment, like those we give our swimming pools, they will continue as well to lose their photosynthetic capacity to counter this onslaught. The loss of net primary productivity, NPP, is reportedly 17% in the North Atlantic, 26% in the North Pacific, and 50% in the sub-tropical tropical oceans.
“We can find the fundamental proof of the depth of this problem by considering it from the point of view of basic chemical thermodynamics. Indeed we have expended a hundred terrawatts or so burning fossil carbon to put that deadly dose of CO2 into our atmosphere and ocean. No trivial energy savings will serve to counter its certain first principals chemical effects. We can still trust in what the Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches us in that one must balance equations energetically. If we are to address a problem created by terrawatts of energy we must devote terrawatts of energy. In this case those curative terrawatts better be emission free or we are lost.
“So where is there a source of emission free terrawatts of curative power we can devote to saving the oceans and help restore the balance of Nature? It is of course ONLY available from photosynthesis and therein lies the course we must chart to restore our oceans as we must surely not simply imagine the damage we’ve prescribed can simply be ignored and start from the present mortally wounded state. No mere conservation ethic or effort will suffice, we are far to far over the tipping point for that to work. We must replenish and restore ocean photosynthesis for there in the vast living ocean expanse the terrawatts of power, solar power, can be found and used to compete with the H2O+CO2=H2CO3 reaction. There in lies hope if we act now to assist the ocean plants, phyto-plankton, to convert CO2 in the ocean to life instead of death. Without replenished mineral micronutrients, without our determined efforts to administer the antidote, life in the oceans, and on this small blue planet, will surely revert to the cyanobacteroa; state from whence it came.
“If you are a religious person you might liken what we need to do as seeking absolution for our sins of emission by our acts of contrition and ecorestoration, otherwise the path to perdition is that of dissolution of those sins into dying oceans,” George wrote
Eric Wesoff
I moderated a solar thermal panel at Intersolar on Wednesday with three major players in the rapidly emerging solar thermal market – Ausra’s Glen Davis, Acciona’s Gilbert Cohen and Josef Eichhamer of Solar Millennium.
All of the firms that were on the panel have major contracts to provide power, are building or have built numerous power projects already, and – in the case of Acciona and Solar Millennium – have years of real power generation experience with massive scale solar thermal power plants. These are not naïve startups with hopes of sales but active and successful providers of utility-scale power. All of the participants on this panel used variations of a mirrored-trough style architecture.
Ausra’s Glen Davis discussed the significant differences in financing solar thermal projects versus financing wind projects.
Here’s a quick rundown of Glen’s major points:
Acciona’s Gilbert Cohen may have more experience in solar thermal projects than anyone on this planet, which is why we were fortunate that he was able to give us a summary of the real world performance of a project he has seen through from start to finish – the 64-megawatt Nevada Solar One. Here are some photos and videos of the project.
Neva
da Solar One cost $266 million to build and at $3,700 per megawatt installed represents the lowest cost per watt of any solar thermal project to date. Mr. Cohen sees this price plummeting even further as more experience is amassed and as supply chains become more mature. The plant is producing reliable power right now (if you’re reading this in the daytime) and is actually producing 11 percent more power than predicted. This level of brilliant success will pave the way for more solar thermal projects with confident, motivated financiers.
Nevada Solar One (pictured on the right) is producing power today.
We also heard from Josef Eichhamer of Solar Millennium who extolled the virtues of incorporating molten salt storage into a solar thermal system. The addition of a Thermal Energy Storage system can add up to seven hours of dispatchable power to a plant profile. This does a lot to dispel any notion of renewable energy being unpredictable. Eichhammer said, “This is firm power, not intermittent.”
Some fun salt facts: TES’s plant uses 27,500 tons of salt. It’s tanks are 14 meters high and 38 meters in diameter. The salt (KNO3) costs about $1,600 per ton.
TES allows utilities to meet peak demand with solar power even if the sun is not out. This is especially important in Spain where many of these projects are being built, as Spain has a unique power profile with a peak at midnight!
Massive storage tanks for molten salt Thermal Energy Storage (TES) at the Andasol project can be seen in this image.
Solar thermal power with thermal storage is here today and with no fuel risks and no carbon footprint should grow faster than anyone has predicted.
Michael Kanellos
You’ve seen pre-paid cell phones. Now get ready for pre-paid power bills.
A few utilities in the U.S. are looking at implementing pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, power bills, according to Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril, a start-up specializing in household energy management. The concept is simple. You pay money to the utility at the beginning of the month, and they keep the lights on as long as your cash holds out.
The concept was started in Europe, he noted. Utilities in England, in fact, used to put coin slots in buildings so residents could chalk up another 50p of power when they needed it. Now, people mostly pay through their cell phones. It’s mostly for people with bad credit (i.e. temp workers, band members and former Bear Stearns partners.) Nonetheless, it’s now a huge part of the market now.
The system is also popular with owners of apartment buildings who don’t want to get stuck with the power bills of departing tenants.
Tendril, by the way, makes Zigbee-enabled devices such as thermostats that allow the resident or the utility to control heating, lighting and other energy hogs from a distance. The company designs and sells hardware as well as management services. While there are a bunch of companies in this market, they seem to be emerging pretty well from the pack.
Michael Kanellos
Xerocoat wants to pull off the triple in the solar world: sell the same product to solar thermal, crystalline PV and thin film manufacturers.
The Redwood City-based company has come up with an anti-reflective, porous glass coating that can boost the efficiency of solar components by essentially preventing incoming solar energy from bouncing.
The material can increase the relative efficiency of crystalline solar panels by approximately 3 percent, according to CEO Tom Hood. Over a 25-year period, that results in 4 percent more kilowatt hours generated by the same panel, he claimed. By integrating the coating, manufacturers can effectively upsell their panels.
“We increase the nameplate capacity,” he said. Right now, only around 5 percent of PV makers apply supplementary anti-reflective coatings to their panels, he added.
In solar thermal systems, the coating is applied to the external glass tube of the concentrator. (Concentrators in traditional solar thermal systems contain two vacuum-sealed tubes: an external one that lets heat in and shields the internal tube from the elements, and an internal tube that holds oil that gets heated by the sun’s energy. )
The company is currently conducting a trial with a U.S. solar thermal company building a 1 megawatt demonstration plant in California.
The coating is applied as a liquid. When cured, pores measuring five to 20 nanometers across permeate it. Xerocoat expects key patents for its process to issue later this year. Nth Power and Southern Cross Venture Partners have invested in the company.
Eric Wesoff
Continuing where we left off yesterday, here’s more of the chatter coming out of this year’s Intersolar conference in San Francisco:
- From the really big valuation department…Optisolar allegedly received a $132 million funding round last quarter at an $850 million pre-money valuation according to several anonymous VCs. Optisolar manufactures PV modules and builds large-scale solar farms and joins VC-funded solar firms like Nanosolar, Miasole and Solyndra in the very low-revenue, very high-valuation club. I contacted the communications director at Optisolar but they were less than communicative regarding their funding.
- Ausra, the startup solar thermal firm funded by Khosla Ventures and KPCB, announced that it was looking to close a $50M Round C. The company also mentioned that it is developing a proprietary thermal energy storage system that is not molten salt. That leaves water? Rocks?
- Solaicx, is scaling up a big factory to build low-cost solar ingots and wafers optimized for PV. The company’s CEO, Bob Ford, told me that they’re, “Reducing the cost of the wafer 75 percent,” and “launching in a major way with 300MW of capacity by the end of next year.”
- Suvi Sharma, Solaria’s CEO, builds a low-concentration PV system in the standard PV panel footprint by sectioning silicon wafers into strips and adding lensing. The thesis is not only to economize on silicon but as Mr. Sharma states,”The next great area of innovation in solar is in assembly.” The company started shipping its product last quarter from its 25MW production line.
- Nanosolar’s Managing Director, Erik Oldekop, had nothing interesting or new to say because, “You’re a journalist [sic] and not a customer.” I subsequently invited him to speak on one of our upcoming panels to provide more obfuscation and sidestepping.
