Over the past 16 years, I have been involved in 5 successful startup companies ranging from an energy company, to several .com companies. Now I am focusing all of my attention on creating the tipping point in the sustainability movement by pushing initiatives in government, business and the broader social landscape. 
Many people are curious, what I am doing since I left Powerset. Well, the short story is that I have decided to dedicate myself to what I call the new Green Economy and I am working on several initiatives with other leaders in government and businesses that all fall under the responsibility of non-profit that I am founding called SF Green. 
Can you see the bee in the picture? Most ecosystems in nature don't rely on one monolythic structure that makes them sustainable. In fact, its quite the opposite. In nature, it is quite often that it's a complex array of many small things working in a system that makes it sustainable - like this bee, who is part of a distributed system of small insects who are responsible for pollinating this avocado plant. Can we look at a sustainable energy ecosystem in the same way? Are utility companies really a bye-gone symbol of our ignorance of sustainable ecosystems?
Why is Going Small Such a BIG deal for Green? If you look over the list of companies get big investments today, you will very easily see that most of these companies are focusing on very large, centralized installations of utility scale alternative energy solutions (i.e. let's replace a coal fired plant with a solar powered plant). But that's all about to change. A new wave of companies believe these big system approaches can be outdone by micro-green solutions which emulate ecosystems in nature. The idea is that the cumulative effect of consumers and companies buying more and more small, distributed and independant energy systems results in a much more stable energy infrastructure, more options for consumers and increased competition in the energy industry.
Join me as a I explore the world of Micro-Green, give you some perspective on why its so important and highlight a few of the companies and technologies that could be a big deal in the new Green Economy.
Ok. So when can I buy my Micro-Windmill to power my Christmas lights? Over the next few years, these new waves of companies will infiltrate nearly every aspect of sustainable energy including wind power, bio-power, fuel cells and solar power. Does this mean that there will be such a thing as a micro-windmill that powers your Christmas lights this year? or better yet, one that powers your neighbor too - for a small fee of coarse. You'd be surprised how close we are to this type of reality - but it is a lot more complicated than simply making the big small.
What are Micro-Green Solutions?
I will do my best trying to define what Micro-Green means, but the reality is that this field is so new it is expanding every day. Perhaps the best way is to give you a couple of examples and point you to some companies that are creating Micro-Green Products.
One of my favorite companies is a micro-wind power company called Humdinger. Shawn Frayne, CEO of Humdinger and graduate of MIT, is the visionairy behind this company and sees a tremdously wide variety of applications for his company's technology. What makes their company really interesting to me is that while their product is based on wind power, it looks and operates nothing like a windmill - because it generates electricity by capturing what is called aeroelastic flutter. The best way I can describe aeroelastic flutter is remember how as a kid you could grab a piece of grass, put it between your thumb and forefinger and turn it into a cazoo - well it's kind of like that. Their device uses the energy of the vibrating "grass" to product electricity.
Hence, their device looks more like one of those Ionic Air Filters you can buy from Sharper Image. That's important, because their wind power device would have one feature that no min-windmill would ever have. It ain't a monstrocity. I could really easily imagine putting these things on my house (in a tastefull manner) way before I could imagine putting a windmill in my back yard or even worse on my roof (hello captain wind-nut my neighbors would say) Likewise, I think the same effect applies for my neighborhood association, my company and my city. But that's not the only thing this new technology has going for it. It turns out that windmill power looses efficiency in the "small" and isn't so useful anyway. Shawn's technology compensates for that and produces electricity with a high level of efficiency. I wonder how many of Shawns Ion Breeze Wind Power things it would take for me to power 20% of my house?
See how Shawn describes their breakthrough.
"For the past thousand years, wind power has centered around rotation. Rotating dutch wind mills for pounding grain, rotating sail designs for pumping water, and most recently rotating turbine-based generators for creating electricity. These approaches work fine for the macro-applications for which they were originally designed. However, on the small scale, rotating systems have big problems. Efficiency losses in gear boxes, decreased efficiency of miniaturized airfoils, the need for specialized bearings to reduce wear...all lead to system failure in hours, 1% efficiencies, and the need for hurricane speed winds.
Humdinger’s core technology, the WindbeltTM generator, gets around these problems by putting aside rotation entirely. Instead, we have developed a method by which a taut, vibrating membrane, coupled with a no-contact, direct-drive electrical generator, can tap the energy of flowing air. The effect we capitalize on is known as aeroelastic flutter, most famously exhibited in the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse (see a video of the collapse here)."
Another company that I like is NRG who makes the NRG Solar re-charge station for electronic devices. I want to make it clear that I am highlighting this company, not because I think the product is cool, but because NRG is symbolic of 1,000 of products that are about to enter the market. Remember when the popularity of the iPod brought on a wave of companies selling every possible iPod compatible thing you could imagine.
Well take that type of thing and now apply it to Green. Next year's CES is going to be so Green it will make you turn purple. In a year or two everything we know will suddenly turn Green - from Green battery re-chargers, to Green laptops, Green TVs, even green eggs and ham won't be Green enough for the marketing departments of product companies. What the Green marketing gurus will have us doing is the old "keeping up with the Jones's" approach to marketing - i.e. if you aren't Green then you aren't in fashion.
One of the more interesting technologies and more politically charge ideas deals with using fuel cells in a distributed system as part of the United States energy grid. Here's the idea: Imagine having a fuel cell located on every Nth telephone pole and that fuel cell uses water (and water would need to be connected to the fuel cells) and these fuel cells would produce electricity and put it on the grid. The uses of this type of decentralized and distributed approach are vast. It could be used to shave peak load use, it could be used to reduce single point of failure, it could be used to reduce brown outs and it could be used to create more energy without building more power plants based on non-sustainable resources.
Is this a reality. Well a lot of people hope that it can be, but my sense is we are a long, I mean looong way off from this reality. Let's see here are the hurdles as I see them: 1. Regulatory problems
2. Political problems
3. Problems with utility companies fighting this
4. Fuel Cell aren't perfect
5. Distributed Systems - which plays in this space has huge hurdles in front of it and several blog stories claim the fuel cell division is going to be sold off
I think that the promise of fuel cells as part of an overall distributed system are quite intriguing, but I think this one is going to be a long tough road.
Why are Micro-Green products a BIG Deal?
Ok. First thing is first. Let's try an parse apart why small is a bigger deal than big, when it comes to sustainable energy solutions. Rather than wax on forever, I will assume my audience is well informed, so I will skip most of the details so I can concentrate on making the point.
The advantages are:
Ok. So that's all I have for now on the topic. As you can tell, I'm trying to go significantly deeper than most "deal announcement blogs" but I am trying to keep it below a 10 minute read. If you want to add to this story, denounce it as trash or comment, please send me an email at newcomb.steve@yahoo.com - it will only make the information more valid and more valuable to the readers.
- Consumers can buy Micro-Green solutions one at a time and can make themselves more sustainable and more in control of their own energy destiny over a time frame that they choose;
- Micro-Green solutions put much more power in the hands of the consumer and provide much more choice;
- Micro-Green solutions could end up making a consumer completely independant from their local utility company;
- A network of Micro-Green energy systems are distributed systems that do not have single points of failure;
- Micro-Green energy solutions can be networked together and co-dependent or can be separated and completely independent;
- Micro-Green devices are cheap and everyone can have one; this will make every start to buy in to the Green band wagon;
- Micro-Green solutions can be sold now because they don't require lots of infrastructure to be in place, don't need any laws to passed and can't be stopped by other big companies