For Honolulu-based clean energy company Sopogy Inc., APEC will give it a chance to strengthen its foothold in Asia, where it already has projects in Thailand, Singapore and Japan, said Darren Kimura, president and chief executive officer.

Having dozens of potential customers under one roof is extremely beneficial from a logistical standpoint, he said. A typical business trip to Asia involves 18 hours of flying time each way and considerable expense for airfare and hotel stays.

“Here we can hit five or six countries at once,” Kimura said. “It will save us months’ worth of traveling.”

Kimura said Sopogy is planning to take potential customers on tours of its office in Honolulu and its solar power facility in Kona. “We’re planning on doing quite a bit of show and tell.”

• High turbine / thermodynamic cycle efficiency;
• Turbine low mechanical stress;
• Absence of moisture during the vapour expansion, responsible for the erosion of the blades;
• Simple start up procedures;
• Automatic and continuous operation;
• Simple maintenance procedure;
• No operator attendance required;
• Long life of the plant (> 20 years);
• No need to demineralize water.

MicroCSP Published Items

1. Sopogy Strengthens Execution Capabilities - Management changes are focused on rapid commercialization of solar steam and process heat markets. Belmont, CA. — March 19, 2013 – Sopogy, Inc., a concentrating solar thermal technology company, today announced that it has appointed David Fernandez as its President and Chief Operating Officer to strengthen its execution capabilities. Furthermore, the company has appointed Darren T. [...]
2. Venture capitalists honor Sopogy founder, others - By Star-Advertiser staff POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 25, 2013 The Hawaii Venture Capital Association on Thursday presented its 2012 “Deal of the Year” award to Darren Kimura, the founder and CEO of a Honolulu-based company that pioneered the concept of micro-concentrated solar power systems. Kimura’s Sopogy Inc. has deployed its technology at facilities in [...]
3. Sopogy Receives 2012 Hawaii Venture Capital Association Deal of the Year Award - The Hawaii Venture Capital Association awarded its 2012 HVCA Deal of the Year to Darren Kimura, CEO of Sopogy, maker of concentrated thermal solar collectors. In addition five local entrepreneurs were acknowledged in various categories with the HVCA Entrepreneur of the Year award. The Young Entrepreneur award went to Scott Mercer of Volta Industries, makers of [...]
4. Sopogy, Inc. Announces Close of Series E Funding Led by Mitsui & Co., Ltd. - November 26, 2012 Company intensifies commercialization of solar steam and renewable industrial process heat markets HONOLULU, HI.— November 26, 2012 – Sopogy, a concentrating solar thermal technology company today announced the closing of its Series E round of preferred stock and warrants led by Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (“Mitsui”). Also participating in the round were [...]
5. Hawaii’s solar power flare-up: Too much of a good thing? - So many private solar panels are returning power to the grid that utilities fear their systems can't handle it all.
6. The Climate Reality Project - YOU’RE INVITED TO CHANGE THE WORLD. NOVEMBER 14-15, 2012 Dirty energy has created a world of Dirty Weather. Today, climate disruption affects us all. And it will take all of us together to solve it. Join us for 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report, when together we will stand up and demand real [...]
7. Desalination Pilot Project Harnesses Solar Power - UH hopes technology adapted from work at the school will fuel licensing revenue.
8. Palm Springs Air Museum to adopt cutting-edge A/C - Sopogy MicroCSP, uses solar thermal troughs to collect and intensify heat from the sun to heat liquid, which will then be used to cool the 22,000-square-foot hangar where the planes are displayed.
9. Sunlight’s heat will cool down youth center at Davis-Monthan - Sopogy Inc., a Hawaii-based energy company, is installing a new type of solar-energy system at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base that will use heat from sunlight to create chilled air.
10. Keahole Solar Power, HECO sign power-purchase agreement to use Sopogy technologies - The 5 Megawatt project on Oahu is slated for completion in 2012 and will be the largest Concentrating Solar Power project with storage in Hawaii

Here’s a step by step graphic:

Step 1: The sun’s rays reflect off the parabolic trough which concentrates the sun’s energy onto a centrally-located receiver tube.

Step 2: Heat transfer fluid traveling inside the receiver tube absorbs the concentrated solar energy.

Step 3: The heat transfer fluid temperature increases, in some cases+500°F, as it passes through a series of collectors—convertingconcentrated solar energy into useful high temperature heat (HTH).

Step 4:  High Temperature Heat can then be used to power different applicationsfor industrial and utility facilities as well as solar-hybridplants, such as power, air conditioning, desalination orprocess heat.

Brought to you by Sopogy – “Solar Power Technology”

Due to columns, the page may distort the image so click on the picture to see in normal view.

Industry Insight

Rooftop CSP: Greening the cities

11 February 2010

Green building certification along with a host of demand-drivers may provide micro-CSP with critical market leverage.

By Rajesh Chhabara

Additional reporting by Rikki Stancich

Green building certification is gaining traction in many countries as a means of energy management.

With buildings accounting for some 74 percent of electricity use in the United States, it is hardly surprising that energy efficiency and use of renewable energy have become key criteria in green building certification standards such as US Green Building Council’s LEED certification and UK’s BREEAM certification.

As a relatively new product to market, micro CSP opens up new opportunities for buildings – green or otherwise – to efficiently generate on-site renewable energy.

A portable and scalable on-site solar energy solution, micro CSP can be used to generate electricity, as well as to provide heating and cooling. Suitable for generating energy in the range of 75 KW to 20 MW, micro CSP’s size means the system can be installed in a small area – including on the rooftop of a building.

“A small rooftop, for example the roof top of a large box store such as Wal-Mart, is sufficient to install the micro CSP system,” says Darren Kimura, chief executive of Honolulu-based Sopogy Inc, which has developed a range of micro CSP solutions.

In Sopogy’s case, the micro version runs of an organic ranking cycle (ORC), which instead of using steam, uses the temperature difference between fluids in a closed loop. Unlike large-scale CSP, which requires desert-like conditions of perfect direct normal irradiation, Sopogy’s micro CSP can operate in or near cities.

This is because the ORC is less vulnerable than plants running off a steam turbine, where a cloud passing overhead can cause the steam temperature to drop and the system to shut down.

France-based technology developer, heat2power, has come up with its own version of micro CSP, which uses CSP to power traditional cylinder engines rather than steam turbines or Stirling engines.

The concept is similar to that of a standard combustion engine, except the engine is powered by compressed air, using an external heat source (air heated on a solar receiver to around 900 – 1200°C) rather than from fuel creating an internal combustion.

Using a point concentrating solar array to reflect light and heat to a central receiver tower, the heat2power model is scalable and can utilise anything from a single cylinder 0.5 litre engine to large marine engines based on marine engine blocks, generating power from 10KW – 5MW.

An added advantage is that the engine runs in an ‘open cycle’ and therefore does not require cooling towers or expensive dry cooling used for condensing steam.

Like Sopogy’s solution,  heat2power’s captures the waste heat, which can then be used for heating, cooling and desalination.

“Factory roof tops are the ideal place for small scale CSP. It doesn’t require purchase of land and the shade of the mirrors lowers the cooling requirements of the building underneath“ says Randolph Toom, managing director of heat2power.

This is significant, given that in many regions air-conditioning can account for more than 50 percent of the electrical usage in buildings over a six-month period.

Greening the city, not breaking the bank

Micro CSP can help take green building standards to the next level, given that the system reduces the use of fossil fuel to heat, cool and power buildings.

Currently, LEED and other green certification systems do not require specific renewable technology, nor do they standardise energy systems.

However, compared to other options on the table, micro CSP promises to significantly help builders achieve points for certification.

LEED certification currently allows up to seven points for on-site renewable energy, out of the total 110 points possible. BREEAM, UK’s green building certification standard also awards points for the use of low carbon energy and renewable energy.

Here, micro CSP has an advantage over other similar-scale solar products such as photovoltaic panels.

“More carbon is emitted during manufacturing of PV panels than in making micro CSP system,” says Rajan Kasetti, chief executive of California-based Terrafore Inc, a renewable energy consulting and technology firm.

Kasetti also notes that while PV technology may be good for meeting 5-10 percent of a large building’s energy needs, micro CSP on the rooftop can provide 30-40 percent of the energy needed.

Builders, who often cite increased cost of adding renewable energy system as a reason for avoiding them, will find micro CSP’s shorter payback period very attractive. Kimura estimates the payback to range from three to seven years, depending on project size.

“If you use photovoltaic, it does increase the cost. But solar thermal cooling does not. It actually makes the overall building more efficient,” says Kimura.

This is demonstrated via an efficiency comparison in the case of air-conditioning. Photovoltaic efficiency is around 9 percent, compared to solar thermal efficiency, which can be as high as 40 percent.

Toom similarly notes that the return on investment on the heat2power CSP solution is much faster than for other solar options.

“The cost is roughly €300/kw (US$407/kw) for a heat2power engine, compared with around €2000/kw (US$2,712/kw)  for a Stirling engine or €1000/kw (US$1,356/kw) for a steam turbine,” he says.

Compared to other small-scale renewable energy options, micro CSP is a more efficient and, given its capacity for storage, a more stable option.

“Using micro CSP, heat can be stored which then can be used to generate power or steam when the load is higher in the evening or when the sky is cloudy,” points out Kasetti.  “CSP is also much more stable than the PV which is subject to fluctuations,” he adds.

Demand drivers

Support policies such as feed-in tariffs will play an important role in increasing the market penetration of distributed generation systems such as micro CSP.

“Solar energy proliferation has happened in countries where there are good feed-in tariffs as in some parts of Europe,” notes Kasetti.

The UK government recently introduced a feed-in tariff scheme to encourage households and local communities to set up small-scale clean energy generation of up to 5 MW.

The UK’s scheme enables households to earn money by installing low carbon electricity generation. The government also plans to introduce renewable heat incentive for installing micro combined heat and power next year.

Such policies, if adopted elsewhere, will undoubtedly boost renewable micro-generation technologies such as micro-CSP.

Increasing demand for green buildings from sustainability-committed multinational companies will also expand the number of micro CSP installations.

“The builder has a marketing advantage if the building is fitted with on-site renewable energy,” says Kasetti.

But Kimura estimates it will take about five years before micro CSP becomes commonplace in buildings.

“Most other CSP companies are selling utility scale power projects. For us, the challenge is in educating people about the benefits of micro CSP and explaining that CSP is not just for the middle of desert and that it can actually be used for generating steam and cooling as well,” he concludes.

To respond to this article, please write to:

Rajesh Chhabara: rajesh.chhabara@csrworks.com

Or write to the editor:

Rikki Stancich: rstancich@gmail.com

Innovation Award:

Sopogy

Being Part of the Solution to Big Global Problems

Growing up in Hilo, Darren Kimura saw dock strikes and the closings of sugar plantations and wondered why Hawaii’s people could not be part of their own economic solutions. When the University of Hawaii graduate decided to start a solar-energy business, he chose the much-riskier route of creating new technologies rather than distributing and selling existing products and services.

“Hawaii not only imports oil and exports our dollars for our energy, but we also import technology for renewable energy and export dollars for that, too,” he says. “Renewable energy is the new agriculture and technologies can be designed, developed and deployed here, bringing clean green power to the Islands, but also sold around the world from Hawaii.”

As proof, Sopogy’s invention and manufacture of a unique solar concentrating panel has evolved a new technology called “MicroCSP” (Micro-Concentrating Solar Power), a miniaturized version of larger, decades-old CSP technologies operating in the world’s hot deserts. Reducing the size and improving the durability for a proven solar-energy technology means places like Hawaii – with an ocean salt and volcanic atmosphere, limited land space and tropical-storm weather – can harness sunlight on a large scale for energy.

In December, Sopogy unveiled the world’s first and largest MicroCSP facility, a 4-acre, 500-kilowatt-capacity solar farm in Kona on the Big Island, which can power more than 250 homes and cut oil imports by 2,000 barrels annually. The company says its scalable and modular MicroCSP solar-power collectors, together with its proprietary technologies, have caught international attention and a project is now proposed for Spain. From 2007 to 2008, revenues for the Honolulu-based company of 30 employees soared 680 percent.

However, Kimura says, it wasn’t an overnight success for Sopogy, which is an abbreviation of the words solar-power technology. He started the company in 2002 with his own money and spent the first five years without a profit, while focusing on the development of CSP intellectual properties.

New uses being explored for Sopogy’s technology include creating clean drinking water from sea water and manufacturing portable refrigeration units for farms. These uses are all part of the small company’s big ambition to be part of the solution to the global problems of climate change, energy security and sustainability.

“The culture of innovation has been, and remains, the key to Sopogy’s growth,” says Kimura. “We have the intelligence here in Hawaii to make us the beacon for the rest of the world when it comes to clean and green power.

-By Gail Miyasaki

A123’s IPO Already Bringing Hope to Other Cleantech Startups

By Chris Morrison | Sep 24, 2009

Hours ahead of battery maker A123 Systems‘ initial public offering, optimism is already running high that the company will crack open a stagnant market and convince investors that they should also buy into other stock offerings.

A123 made an 11th-hour call yesterday to raise the price its opening price by 23 percent, to a range of $10 to $11.50. If the company gets traction it will bring in about $250 million. That’s not bad, for a firm that lost $40.7 million in the first half of the year. Its revenue was only slightly higher, at $42.9 million.

But A123 is well positioned. It started off selling batteries into the power tool market. That led to electric cars — which are not yet common on the road, by any means. The expectation is that electric vehicles will multiply rapidly in coming years; even if they don’t, A123 is also starting to make batteries for utilities, to store excess capacity from solar or wind power farms.

Battery technology also takes a long time to perfect, meaning newer competitors could take years to catch up to A123, offering some stability. So as startups go, it’s a good company to attract attention from the stock markets during a protracted downturn. The question is whether others can follow in A123’s footsteps.

I’d say “yes”, and here’s why: Investors seem to be wising up to what actually works in cleantech. When A123 first filed for an IPO last year, it was in a group of other renewable energy companies, including Imperium Renewables, a biodiesel maker. That company burned through a massive amount of cash very quickly, and is now in no position to have an IPO, or do much of anything else.

Ditto for dozens of other biofuel companies, including corn ethanol busts that did go public, like Verasun and Pacific Ethanol. But, as with the internet boom, all this simply meant that investors were still getting their bearings. It wasn’t yet evident which areas of cleantech would make for the best bets.

Now the picture is becoming clearer, and companies like A123 are offering growth prospects that are based on more than just hype.

There’s also a line of other companies that have met with some success, and are just waiting for the chance to go public. There are some obvious candidates here. Tesla Motors, the electric car maker, is working on its second model and would probably be thrilled to go public. Silver Spring Networks, a smart grid equipment maker, has inked dozens of deals, and will need cash to expand.

First Wind, a wind developer that filed around the same time last year as A123, is probably still waiting for its chance. And then there are the solar companies who have more or less proven their technology and already drawn in lots of private financing: Solyndra, Nanosolar, BrightSource and some smaller ones like Sopogy.

It takes a while to complete an IPO application, but chances are some of the above (and some not mentioned) are already hard at work. Others will probably join in once the results from A123 come back. Next year will be one to watch.

Original Story at: Bnet.Com ]]> http://theothersolar.com/?feed=rss2&p=176 0 http://theothersolar.com/?p=173 http://theothersolar.com/?p=173#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:53:41 +0000 admin http://theothersolar.com/?p=173

Biomimicry: Life’s Quintessential Form of Flattery

Hawaii Innovation Podcast

Mobile Users: Podcast

Nature has been showing us all along…

All great inventions have sought to mimic nature, whether their creators realized it at the time or not. From aircraft that fly among the birds, to mirrors that reflect images as only a still pond once could, to semiconductors that mimic intelligence, to the skyscrapers that rise to the sky like magnificent glass and metal trees. Those who tune in to nature and allow it to speak to them have an abundance of knowledge not available to others.

For those of us living in Hawai?i, we know that turning to the powerful and inspirational source of nature will often generate the most creative and successful solutions to even the most difficult problems.

Biomimicry

One aspect of nature humans have been trying to mimic for quite some time now (albeit unsuccessfully on a global scale) is its limitless abundance of energy. Since the age of industry, the resounding question has been, “how do we harness this energy to fulfill the unrelenting demands of our modern day needs?” If we borrow a page from nature, particularly plants, the answer becomes evident.

Plants derive their growth from processing the divine energy of the sun. They transmute sunlight into energy through the natural process of photosynthesis. Decades ago, an incredibly tuned-in individual realized this could be replicated, and gave birth to the idea of the first photovoltaic panel. A photovoltaic panel is fundamentally the best attempt at producing a synthetic plant: It converts the sun’s direct energy into electricity, just as the plumeria tree converts sunshine into fiber, leaves and fragrant flowers. Although photovoltaic panels are effective at converting some of the sun’s energy, they are inefficient at fully capturing all of the potential energy that falls upon their surface every day.

A New Approach to Solar Energy

One Hawai?i entrepreneur, Darren Kimura, has taken the concept of artificial photosynthesis one step further, in a technology he calls Micro Concentrating Solar Power, or MicroCSP™. His company, Sopogy, Inc., simplifies power generation with cheap metal, a few mirrors and a tube filled with an organic heat transfer fluid. “Nature is the ultimate industrial designer,” Kimura says.”We simply copied the best parts from her collective works and incorporated them into the MicroCSP™ technology form.”

Sopogy’s™ Unique MicroCSP™ SopoNova™ design allows for maximum exposure to the sun

Sopogy gets its name from the words “solar,” “power” and “technology.” Its MicroCSP™ collectors are in use around the globe, including the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Kimura’s collectors mimic the way plants convert energy in nature. Kimura’s patented process extracts solar energy by heating an organic solution (usually mineral oil.) The vapor is then used to spin a turbine and generate electricity. The design is based on a metal parabolic U-shaped trough, similar to the broad leaf of a plant. The “working fluid” is like the stem and root system of a plant, a literal “power plant!”

Sopogy’s design also includes the “phototropic” ability to follow the sun across the sky throughout the day, the way many plants do on earth. The result is an effective and efficient energy production unit in a highly scalable form, just 12 feet long by 5 feet wide, ideal for distributed energy applications.

Cooling Power for Southern California Gas Company

This summer, Sopogy announced an agreement with Southern California Gas Company to produce more than 10 tons of cooling power in an air-cooling unit that will generate significantly lower costs and emissions than a typical air conditioning system. “It isn’t obvious that solar thermal energy can be used to create air conditioning, but the efficiencies in doing so are incredible and the system displaces the burning of a significant amount of fossil fuels,” said Kimura.

Kimura is an example of a Hawai?i-based executive who continues to be inspired by nature. What better reservoir of inspiration than the system to which we are all intrinsically interconnected? Nature shares her lessons freely. If we could just listen, we might also learn how to make things less complicated than they need to be. From humble beginnings on the Big Island to commercial sites throughout the world, Sopogy is an example of how simplicity, inspired by nature, can help improve the quality of life and protect our planet for future generations to come.

SopoLite™ is a fully functional mobile lab unit used to gather data and evaluate a project site’s potential.  Its name comes from the term Satellite as the SopoLite™ is designed to be a stand-alone instrument. The system is a miniature version of Sopogy’s parabolic trough solar collector, SopoNova™ and is used as a mobile lab to collect data and thermal performance at any given location.  Various sensors on the SopoLite™ are used to measure temperature gains, flow velocities, solar irradiance, wind speed, rainfall, ambient temperatures and thermal performance of the collector. The information is transmitted back to Sopogy headquarters where our team of engineers, correlate the solar conditions with modeled data to ensure project viability.

Sopogy™ is deploying SopoLite™ across the US and around the World in an effort to collect relevant solar data useful for evaluating locations across the globe to determine the quality of their solar resources. So far, SopoLite™ has been deployed to the following locations:

• SopoLite™ started its journey at Sopogy’s headquarters in Honolulu.
• From there, SopoLite™ traveled to a Department of Hawaiian Homelands Building in Kapolei on the Island of Oahu
• Currently, SopoLite™ is at the Makena Wastewater Treatment Facility on the Island of Maui.
• Another SopoLite™ Unit is also collecting data in Costa Mesa, California

Where will SopoLite™ end up Next?