Veranda Solar

Can Oakland Startup Veranda Become the Apple of Solar?

Written by Jennifer Kho

8 Comments

Posted March 4th, 2009 at 12:00 am in Energy,Startups

Updated: Apple has developed a reputation for sleek, hip and user-friendly computers and electronics. Now, Veranda Solar, a startup based in Portland, Ore. and Oakland, Calif., developing small, easy-to-install solar-power systems, says it wants to become the Apple of consumer solar products. (Updated to reflect that the company works out of both cities.)

How so? Instead of focusing on a new solar chemistry or production technology, the company hopes to differentiate itself with its aesthetics, appeal and ease of use, CEO Capra J’neva says. “We interact with real people to create our products, so we are reducing market risk by understanding the real needs of people who will buy [them],” she told us last week.

The Veranda Solar system “will appeal to the type of people who like Apple products,” J’neva said, though the company is also focused on the subset of those Apple aficionados who want to live a more sustainable lifestyle and do something positive for the environment. But unlike Apple, Veranda plans to offer affordable prices.

Founded in December, the startup is designing solar-power systems, made up of small (about 24-inch and 60- to 70-watt) panels with rounded corners, that consumers can install themselves. Veranda’s systems, based on prototypes that were developed at Stanford University with SunPower Corp., will fold flat — making them easy to ship — and snap together. The systems will include the panels, inverter and everything else needed to deliver power into a home, and will be certified to plug right into a standard wall outlet, J’neva said. The idea is that customers will be able to install them with only a screwdriver, mounting them on roofs, windowsills, balconies or walls.

From the photos, the prototype panel designs look a bit like a four-leaf clover and a lily pad. “We were wanting to create a solar panel that was not intimidating to people, and our target market likes the rounded corners,” J’neva said. “It’s huggable.” But don’t expect the final design to look just like the prototypes. The company is now optimizing the panels for manufacturing, and that’s likely to encourage less roundness, meaning they’ll probably more closely resemble the smaller of the two prototypes, she said. “Obviously, we don’t want to waste that much glass, either,” she added.

The company, which presented at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week, is seeking $1.5 million to bring its systems to the market, starting with the West Coast. Veranda already raised seed funding in the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s Picnic Green Challengebusiness-plan competition, when it won a second prize of €100,000 (about $123,000) last year.

The company plans to use its current round of funding to finish its third prototype, get Underwriters Laboratories certification and begin production. In spite of its panels’ different shape, Veranda says they can be made using existing equipment and processes. “We are not taking a 2-inch sample of solar-cell material and trying to scale it to production, requiring huge investments in capital equipment and research,” J’neva said. “Because we’re not a risky lab project, we expect we can bring [our product] to market later this year and make a profit within three years.”

Still, a new shape does bring a certain element of risk, said Travis Bradford, president of solar-research firm Prometheus Institute. “Any time you change your form factor, you have to change your approach to distribution and integration and maintenance,” he said. “That is a seriously nontrivial set of activities.” But the idea of making solar more attractive is an important one, he added. “A lot of people share an intuition that that is necessary and will occur, and nothing jumps to mind as a shining example of success yet.” he said. “Somebody’s going to sell sexy solar. The current crop isn’t that pretty.”

Veranda expects its systems, which include a panel, an inverter and cables, will start at $600 — or about $400 for just the panels, J’neva said. Veranda expects to sell systems at home-decor and home-improvement stores such as Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and Home Depot, as well as through utilities, direct sales and solar-specialty businesses. The company forecasts it will net $140,355 in sales from 300 customers this year and turn a profit in 2011.

www.verandasolar.com

www.earth2tech.com

Si se puede

Obama’s chance to lead the green recovery

By Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern

Published: March 2 2009 19:16 | Last updated: March 2 2009 19:16

We face two crises: a deep global financial crisis, caused by inadequate management of risk in the financial sector; and an even deeper climate crisis, the effects of which may seem more distant but will be determined by the actions we take now.

The scale of risk from climate change is altogether of a different and greater magnitude, as are the consequences of mismanaging or ignoring it. The US, in particular, has a window of opportunity to act on the financial crisis and, at the same time, lay the foundations for a new wave of growth based on the technologies for a low-carbon economy.

President Barack Obama, in his speech to Congress and budget last week, explained that we need to address both of these challenges, and outlined a broad approach. US leadership could generate a powerful response from across the world, making possible an agreement at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December on a scale necessary to manage the risks involved.

We will eventually emerge from the financial crisis, although mistakes in management can affect its depth and duration. However, mistakes in managing the risks of the climate crisis may be irreversible. As noted in Making Globalization Work*, if we had a thousand planets we might continue with the reckless experiment on which we are embarked, and if the likely disaster occurred we could move on to another. Unfortunately we do not have that luxury: we have only one planet.

The financial crisis originated from the housing market bubble and was preceded by the dotcom boom. We cannot replace these with yet another bubble. The investments necessary to convert our society to a low-carbon economy – investments that can change the way we live and work – would drive growth over the next two or three decades. They would ensure that growth, with accompanying improvements in standards of living, was sustainable. The path that we have been on is not.

The economic crisis will leave the US and other economies greatly weakened and it will be imperative to increase efficiency. One area in which there is ample room for improvement is in the energy efficiency of businesses, consumers and the government.

According to a recent paper by the Peterson Institute, spending $10bn (€7.9bn, £7.1bn) to insulate US homes and federal buildings could create and sustain up to 100,000 jobs between 2009 and 2011, while saving the economy from $1.4bn to $3.1bn a year between 2012 and 2020.

This type of investment and those in green technology and infrastructure would not only provide a short-term stimulus but also improve the US competitive position. As the world moves to a low-carbon economy, there will be a competitive advantage for those who embrace these technologies.

Private investments are driven by market signals. These signals are distorted because we have been pricing one of the world’s scarcest resources – a “good” atmosphere; or the societal costs of emissions, which lead to a “bad” atmosphere – at zero. Not surprisingly, this has led to inefficient outcomes, with emissions levels too high and too little effort devoted to energy conservation and research.

Providing a strong, stable carbon price is the single policy action that is likely to have the biggest effect in improving economic efficiency and tackling the climate crisis. Clarity on policy and prices is all the more important now, with companies facing such uncertainty because of the financial crisis: the two risks compound each other, damping investment. We may not be able fully to resolve the risks of the financial crisis quickly; but we can take actions now that will markedly reduce uncertainties about future carbon policies and prices.

As creative entrepreneurs turn their minds to the challenges posed by a low-carbon economy, the excitement and drive of innovation is evident. This can be the spur to real growth that has so long been missing. The problems of global warming cannot be attacked without the participation of all countries. The world has been waiting for the US: there is now reason to believe that it is ready to lead.

Joseph Stiglitz, awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, is the author of Making Globalization Work*. Lord Stern is the IG Patel professor and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. They are attending the US Climate Action: a Global Economic Perspective symposium in Washington this Tuesday

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Stone. Immaculate.

Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon, Arizona                                www.shelleylake.com

BP Alternative Energy

Beginning in 1962, BP began its leading stance in environmental research at the corporate level. Its studies on air pollution and alternative energies helped facilitate the worldwide notion that the future of the energy industry was going to be heavily centered around these topics. In 1998, BP became the first energy company to set targets on its internal emissions control to a goal of 10%   below their 1990 levels by the year 2010. Two years later, to further its goal in becoming a leader in environmental awareness, it redesigned its 80 year old logo to represent a helios, which symbolizes energy in all its forms.

BP Alternative Energy invests in the fuel and power of the future. Their portfolio covers a wide range of new energy technologies, from large-scale commercial businesses in solar and wind power to first-in-class projects in promising new areas, such as advanced biofuels, energy conversion, and carbon capture. BP's role is to incubate and establish major growth businesses, helping to fulfill their purpose of meeting the world's demand for increasing volumes of secure, green and affordable energy. With investment running at $1.5 bn a year, their business demonstrates the scale of BP's commitment to the new energy sector.

One example of this commitment is the establishment of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This $500 million dollar research effort was formed under the direction of the new Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration, Steven Chu. The EBI will initially focus its research on biotechnology biofuels - that is, turning plants and plant materials, including corn, field waste, switchgrass and algae, into transportation fuels.

  

www.bp.com

www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org

         

The bow bends; the wood complains - Camus

We shall choose Ithaca, the faithful land, frugal and audacious thought, lucid action, the generosity of the man who understands. In the light, the earth, the earth remains our first and last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again renounce to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter food, the harsh wind off the sea, the ancient dawn forever renewed.

With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing. Not even that phantom Nietzsche who, for twelve years after his downfall, was continually invoked by the West as the ruined image of its loftiest knowledge and its nihilism; nor the prophet of justice without mercy who rests, by mistake, in the unbelievers' plot at Highgate Cemetery; nor the deified mummy of the man of action in his glass coffin; nor any part of what the intelligence and energy of Europe have ceaselessly furnished to the pride of a contemptible period. All may indeed live again, side by side with the martyrs of 1905, but on condition that they shall understand how they correct one another, and that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all. Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism.

At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent rages. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.

To Infinity and Beyond...

Space Debris Illustrated: The Problem in Pictures

The Forgiveness of the Commons

The world has changed significantly since Garret Hardin’s 1968 piece The Tragedy of the Commons. While the state of the commons has become more tragic in almost every measurable way, there is a rapidly growing movement across the planet to try and repair our badly damaged relationship with the natural world. This movement consists of millions of peoples from diverse backgrounds, cultures and all levels of economic development. It has provided a platform for shared purpose between competing and often adversarial actors. It is characterized by small daily gestures, local autonomous planning and grand, sophisticated designs. These actions in aggregate signal an aspirational synthesis with transformative potential.

Will the commons have the capacity to forgive apathy and avarice? We have driven roughshod over the topography - with not so much as a backwards glance - for so long that our tracks are long and deep.  We have spewed toxins into the atmosphere at alarming levels that desperately need to be stabilized and, over time, decreased. We have degraded the soils and plants with very little regard for future generations while putting our very sustenance at risk. We have fouled our oceans, the planet’s life support system, in an almost unspeakable manner.      

 Will we finally be able to understand that proper stewardship of the planet actually holds up extremely well to a cost benefit analysis? The crude and corrupt commodification of our natural resources has created negative equity that has left our sustainability balance sheet deeply in the red. Increased investment in enhanced efficiencies, sustainable building practices, and renewable energy sources and technologies provide the greatest potential for new growth markets. This type of integrated investment will pay significant economic and ecological dividends and will allow us to resume our intergenerational responsibility. The global economic contraction has already forced reduced consumption across the board. Although this appears to be a long overdue correction on a karmic level, it has and will create much hardship.  There will be many who suffer disproportionately and the rest of us should take heed. The best we can offer these people and ourselves is a dedication to working towards rebuilding in a sustainable manner that exemplifies our better human natures.

We may not be forgiven by the commons, but we can begin to forgive ourselves. The restorative power of nature should never be underestimated.