The Cleantech Open Rocky Mountain region announced its three 2010 winners last week – a Utah company with a patented process for removing metals and inorganic waste from wastewater; a Texas company with technology for monitoring power-related electronics in solar, wind and electric vehicle applications; and a New Jersey company that builds solid-state storage devices for data centers.
Each of the regional winners will receive $30,000 in cash and in-kind prizes and advance to the Cleantech Open national finals to be held Nov. 17 in San Jose, California, where they’ll compete for a $250,000 top prize.
The winners are:
INOTEC of Salt Lake City, which has developed a patented process for removing metals and inorganic waste from mining, petroleum energy, power generation and agricultural wastewater. CEO and Founder Jack Adams is a research professor at the University of Utah’s College of Mines & Earth Sciences and the technology was developed at the university. The company is targeting the mining industry as its initial market. “It feels great,” Adams said of winning. “We’re bootstrapping the company’s development right now and every bit of financing and support we can get fits right in there with our bootstrap model and will accelerate us even further.”
pureSilicon of Pine Brook, NJ, which produces non-volatile, solid-state storage devices for use in data centers. pureSilicon says one of its storage devices can replace up to 1,000 disc drives and that data centers can reduce energy consumption 75 percent and floor space by 93 percent with its drives. “I’m pretty blown away by the fact that we won,” said CEO Jason Breakstone. “We were up against some pretty steep competition.” Breakstone said pureSilicon is operational “so any additional funds will be greatly beneficial to us.” He said the cash his company receives will go to product development, paying off debt or to help with cash flow. The company plans to move to Colorado next year.
infiniRel Corporation of Frisco, TX, which sells sensor technology that monitors the power-related electronics used in solar, wind and electric vehicle applications. The company says the customer payback for its technology is one to three years. “It feels great,” CEO and Founder Bert Wank said of being named one of the region’s three winners. “But it’s a very, very humbling experience. And it’s a bit of a surprise that we made the cut. We were competing against some incredibly polished and experienced companies.”
Bill Lowstuter’s had a dream for the past 35 years: Getting other people into hot water. Really hot water. It looks like his dream is about to come true.
Lowstuter is founder and chief operating officer of SunTrac Solar of Golden, Colorado.
Most of us think of photovoltaics – using the sun’s power to create electricity – when we think of solar power. But SunTrac manufactures four-by-eight-foot panels that concentrate the sun’s energy to create super-hot water – 140 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit – for commercial and industrial use.
It’s ideal, Lowstuter says, for companies that prepare and process food, hotels and hospitals that need 160-degree water for their laundries, breweries and other commercial and industrial operations that use very hot water.
“It will work really well on domestic hot water for your home,” Lowstuter adds, “but it’s overkill.”
He came up with his design for a solar-concentrating panel in 1975 and built a prototype in 1978. He still has it.
“I’ve carried it around for 30 years and nine houses in five states,” he says. “So, I just have to thank my wife for her patience and perseverance.”
She must like him a lot. “Some of our first dates were actually assembling some of the solar panels,” he says. “Who says engineers aren’t romantic?”
The prototype “was the same design, the same configuration we have now,” Lowstuter says, with some modifications along the way to make the panels more rugged and durable.
Ready to actively sell the product
Although he came up with the idea 35 years ago, Lowstuter says he got serious about developing the product about four years ago.
SunTrac’s ready to actively start selling, he says, “because I’m now really comfortable with the ruggedness, reliability and long-term viability of the product.” For example, a panel installed at Lowstuter’s house came through a one-inch hail storm “perfectly fine.” The same storm damaged the roof of his house and several cars and destroyed his garden. The panels are rated for a 30-year life, he says.
Another reason SunTrac is ready to begin selling its product, Lowstuter says, is the Cleantech Open – a business competition designed to help clean tech startup companies develop the business and marketing expertise they need to become successful.
“I entered the Cleantech Open because I’m an engineer, I’m a tinkerer, and I don’t have the skillsets from the standpoint of doing business planning, marketing and the sales piece of this,” he says.
The Cleantech Open was “a tremendous learning opportunity to be able to help us advance by several years in terms of our business acumen and our presentations and the quality of knowing the market, knowing how to get to the market, knowing how to go into the market and tell the story about why people should be interested in our product and our company,” he says. “It was an immense help.”
Elegant in its simplicity
SunTrac’s product is elegant in its simplicity.
Remember using a magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight to start a fire when you were a kid? SunTrac uses the same principal, except it uses parabola-shaped curved polished aluminum mirrors to focus sunlight on black copper tubes filled with liquid. The liquid, typically a propylene glycol solution, is then used to heat water for commercial and industrial use.
The heart of the SunTrac solar panel is a rectangular manifold – two one-inch metal pipes joined together with six half-inch copper tubes with a special black paint to absorb heat. The manifold serves as a frame that provides the panel’s shape and as a mounting mechanism for the mirrors. And the pipes and copper tubes carry the liquid heated by the mirrors.
The whole thing is enclosed in a metal case with a five-millimeter (3/16”) tempered glass front to protect the mirrors from the elements.
To maximize the amount of sunlight converted to heat, a small 12-volt DC brushless electric motor activated by a pair of light sensors moves the mirrors to track the sun as it moves across the sky. The motor is mounted on the outside of the case for easy replacement.
The panels are up to 76 percent energy efficient – they convert up to 76 percent of the solar energy hitting them into heat. That’s significantly better than evacuated glass tubes, the main competing technology. The average efficiency of the top 15 evacuated tubes on the market is 59 percent, according to a comparison on SunTrac’s website.
As an engineer with extensive manufacturing experience, Lowstuter also has simplified the manufacturing process.
“There’s only about two hours of work in (building) each panel,” Lowstuter says. “We can build probably 25 to 30 a day with a staff of 10 people and five work stations. So, we’re able to rapidly ramp up in terms of being able to meet any anticipated production requirements.”
“The entire panel is designed to be assembled really with two tools,” Lowstuter says. “One is a Number 8 hex head wrench and the other is a Number 10 hex head wrench. There are only two bolt sizes in this entire assembly.”
One SunTrac panel can deliver the same amount of energy (when converted to BTUs) as ten 205-watt photovoltaic panels, Lowstuter says. Up to eight panels can be connected for added heating capacity.
Clean Tech Open organizers have scheduled a free webinar on Tuesday to help potential contestants with the executive summary portion of their applications and to answer questions about the 2010 competition.
The two-hour training sessions begins at 5 p.m., Mountain Time. The training is free. You can register in advance or sign in by following these steps:
------------------------------------------------------- To join the audio conference only ------------------------------------------------------- To receive a call back, provide your phone number when you join the meeting, or call the number below and enter the access code. Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-699-3239 Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300 Global call-in numbers: https://workgreen.webex.com/workgreen/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&ED=132096847&tollFree=1 Toll-free dialing restrictions: http://www.webex.com/pdf/tollfree_restrictions.pdf
Access code:964 835 089
------------------------------------------------------- For assistance ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://workgreen.webex.com/workgreen/mc 2. On the left navigation bar, click "Support".
Organizers of the Rocky Mountain Clean Tech Open (RMCTO) appear to be well on their way to meeting their goal of drawing more contestants from outside of Colorado.
With a month to go before the May 22 filing deadline, more than a dozen companies from outside Colorado have expressed interest in competing, says RMCTO Executive Director Dick Franklin. A half dozen of the 64 companies that competed last year were from outside Colorado.
Holland & Hart, a Cleantech Open sponsor, is hosting an event in Salt Lake City on May 12 for potential contestants. The event will be at Holland and Hart’s office in Salt Lake (222 South Main Street). It will be from 5 to 7 p.m.
The Rocky Mountain Cleantech Open (RMCTO) has kicked off its second year with goals of increasing the number of contestants by 50 percent and expanding the contestants’ geographical representation.
“Most of the 64 companies that entered last year were from Colorado,” said Wes Schrader, who as RMCTO contestant chair is the person responsible for attracting contestants and helping them navigate their way through the application process. “This year we hope to have 100 entrants and we hope to attract more companies from outside of Colorado.” The regional competition is open to cleantech startup companies in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Last year, a dozen companies advanced to the mentoring phase of the competition – meaning they received extensive mentoring and advice on business plan development, financing, marketing and other topics related to successfully launching or growing their companies. Three companies received $50,000 each in cash and in-kind services and competed in the Cleantech Open national finals in San Francisco.
This year, three companies will receive cash and in-kind prizes and 20 companies will be selected for the mentoring phase of the competition, Schrader said.
The deadline for entering is May 22, but the entry fees are lower for teams that sign up earlier. For example, the fee is $149 for teams that sign up by Feb. 27, $199 for teams that sign up by April 3 and $249 for teams that sign up after that. Student teams receive a $50 discount from whatever price applies at the time they submit their application. Teams selected for the mentoring phase of the competition must pay $249 per team member to cover the cost of the materials they receive during the mentoring phase of the competition.
More than a contest
When it comes to the cash prizes, there clearly will be winners and losers, Schrader acknowledged. But he sees major benefits for all the companies that enter, not just the “winners.”
He said companies that make it to the mentoring phase of the competition receive somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 worth of value from the mentoring, networking, exposure to sources of capital and other benefits related to participating in the event – even if they don’t win any of the cash prizes.
“Going through the process accelerates the development of the companies involved by an average of 12 to 18 months,” he said.
Competition rules
Contestants must be startups with less than $500,000 in funding from outside sources during the past 18 months. Grants earmarked for research don’t count toward the $500,000 limit, but the rules specify that “prizes are not intended to subsidize corporate or university projects.”
Each team must have at least two individuals as members. A group of people can form a team specifically to enter the competition, but they must form a legal entity (such as an LLC) with an ownership structure typical of an independent startup before receiving any prizes.
Each business must fall within one of six specified “cleantech” categories: Air, Water and Waste; Energy Efficiency; Green Building; Renewable Energy; Smart Power, Green Grid and Energy Storage; or Transportation. More information about what’s included in the six categories is available on the CTO Web site.
All contestants must be U.S. residents, citizens or legal aliens.
Contestants must pay their entry fee by the May 22 deadline.
How to apply
More information on the Cleantech Open, including eligibility requirements and rules, is available under the Competitions Tab on the Cleantech Open Web Site (go to Business Competition, not Idea Competition). To apply, go to the Login Page and follow the prompts for creating an account and applying. For additional information, contact Wes Schrader at wschrader@cleantechopen.com | 303-351-1120.
One of the finalists in last year’s Clean Tech Open Competition, New Sky Energy of Boulder, has signed a research agreement with the Colorado School of Mines to build a fully operating, scalable model of New Sky’s technology to capture and covert CO2 into useful products.
The $200,000 project will be funded by New Sky and is designed to accelerate commercial deployment of New Sky’s technology.
The project will be managed by Dr. Deane Little, CEO of New Sky Energy, and Dr. Nigel Sammes, the Coors Distinguished Professor of Ceramic Engineering at Mines.
New Sky describes itself as a carbon-negative manufacturing company that captures and converts CO2 into useful chemical feed stocks. The company uses a proprietary chemical process to scrub CO2 from the air, flue gas or other exhausts and convert it into competitively priced, chemically stable solids widely used in industry and agriculture.
Fresh from a successful inaugural year, organizers of the Rocky Mountain Clean Tech Open are gearing up for a bigger and, they hope, better second year.
Biggest changes for 2010: A more aggressive outreach to get more contestants from states other than Colorado and the addition of a sixth state – Arizona – to the five that were already part of the RMCTO: Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Besides a more aggressive effort to attract contestants from other states, RMCTO organizers hope to get more entries this time around. Last year, 65 companies submitted entries. A dozen of them advanced to the mentoring phase of the competition and three semifinalists received $50,000 each in cash and in-kind services and a trip to San Francisco to compete in the CTO national finals.
The goal this year: 100 entries. There’s also discussion of awarding cash prizes to more companies and changing the size of the prizes. But that hasn’t been settled yet.
Dick Franklin, president of Envirobrand, continues as executive director of RMCTO. He’ll also be actively involved in getting a new Clean Tech Open North-Central region based in Minneapolis off the ground.
Kim DeCoste, president of DeCoste and Associates, will head up efforts to increase the number of sponsors and get returning sponsors to dig a little deeper into their bank accounts. Companies or individuals interested in becoming sponsors can contact her at kim@decosteassociates.com. People interested in volunteering to help with this year’s RMCTO should go to the CTO Web site to sign up.
Jerry Brown: Denver-based writer and public relations consultant Jerry Brown has written for The Associated Press, Rocky Mountain News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Arkansas Gazette, The Energy Daily and Coal Outlook. He was writing about energy back in the days when clean, sustainable energy was little more than a pipe dream. He’s returned to covering energy to write about the transition of clean, sustainable energy from pipe dream to reality.
INOTEC of Salt Lake City, which has developed a patented process for removing metals and inorganic waste from mining, petroleum energy, power generation and agricultural wastewater. CEO and Founder Jack Adams is a research professor at the University of Utah’s College of Mines & Earth Sciences and the technology was developed at the university. The company is targeting the mining industry as its initial market. “It feels great,” Adams said of winning. “We’re bootstrapping the company’s development right now and every bit of financing and support we can get fits right in there with our bootstrap model and will accelerate us even further.”
pureSilicon of Pine Brook, NJ, which produces non-volatile, solid-state storage devices for use in data centers. pureSilicon says one of its storage devices can replace up to 1,000 disc drives and that data centers can reduce energy consumption 75 percent and floor space by 93 percent with its drives. “I’m pretty blown away by the fact that we won,” said CEO Jason Breakstone. “We were up against some pretty steep competition.” Breakstone said pureSilicon is operational “so any additional funds will be greatly beneficial to us.” He said the cash his company receives will go to product development, paying off debt or to help with cash flow. The company plans to move to Colorado next year.
infiniRel Corporation of Frisco, TX, which sells sensor technology that monitors the power-related electronics used in solar, wind and electric vehicle applications. The company says the customer payback for its technology is one to three years. “It feels great,” CEO and Founder Bert Wank said of being named one of the region’s three winners. “But it’s a very, very humbling experience. And it’s a bit of a surprise that we made the cut. We were competing against some incredibly polished and experienced companies.”
