Unofficial CA Cleantech Open Awards

I did a guest blog at Neal Dikeman's Cleantechblog.com in which I picked the most interesting companies that were not either a winner or 1st runner-up at the real awards ceremony.  You can read it here.

Comments

[Reinhold Ziegler]

Dear Paul Fox,

Thank you for wondering who the 3rd runner up was in the renewables section of the California Clean Tech competition. As the presenter for AEROTECTURE, a finalist for a novel urban windturbine, I believe that this competition was not about who had the best and most promising energy technology. It was about who had the most dazzling business plan and power-point presentation. Never mind that the winners didn't even have a production prototype.

So we, the staff of AEROTECTURE want to thank you for your acknowledgement of our first class building integrated wind-turbine, which unlike the winner of the competition can work 24 hours a day, summer or winter.

I would like to know how to contact you and give you our presentation and become your client.

Thank You,
Reinhold Ziegler, (415) 290 4990
R&D Director
Aerotecture International.

[Jeremy Stieglitz]

As a developer of a competitive VAWT, I was pleased to see Aerotecture getting noticed and would congratulate them on their excellent design/urban fit.

We've been batting our heads against the wall with the VC community to date. Part of the challenge is that there is a lot of wind turbine quakery out there that simply won't work, and most of these are not aerodynamically sound. Aerotecture turbines, while somewhat lower in overall output, are at least honest and forthcoming in their efficiency data.

Another challenge is that most VCs want something deeply proprietary and especially in Silicon Valley, have a comfort level with examining semiconductor/silicon technologies that are somewhat transferrable to white hot solar space.

Lastly, too often people pose solar as "opposed" to wind technologies. As if they are competing. If there is decent wind resource + decent solar resource, the amortization and cost benefits of doing both are hugely complementary, and your return on investment can literally double or triple. That statement alone baffles me why the VCs chase 80 solar ventures and nearly 0 wind efforts.

The frustrating irony in all of this is that when energy delivery starts to really matter, and dollars per watt start to really get added correctly (total installed cost over yearly kW/hr output), then urban solar is going to look like a weak cousin compared to the energy density/footprint available in urban wind.

I'll give kudos to Aerotecture on their elegant overall design, near ergonomic installation/form factor, but for more power, and higher efficiencies with the backing of deep scientific engineering in blade and configuration layout engineered while innovating simplicity throughout, also check out VAWT startup www.wind-sail.com.

thanks,
Jeremy Stieglitz
Founder and VP Marketing, Wind-Sail