Silicon nanowires and nanotubes – tendrils of pure silicon that stand up like small trees on a substrate and have a number of remarkable properties – are one of those things that have made scientists and industrialists exclaim: "These are fabulous. What do we do with them?"

So far, their main function has been to act as the subject of really cool images from advanced microscopes and serve as a public face for the potential of nanotechnology.

But it's becoming clear that nano silicon may someday generate power out of waste heat. The U.S. consumes 100 quads of energy a year and 55 to 60 quads (a quadrillion BTUs) gets dissipated, often as waste heat, according to Arun Majumdar, who just left the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs to run ARPA-E and work under his old and new boss Steve Chu.

MC10, a startup (and part-time hip hop star) out of the University of Illinois is experimenting with ways to create thermoelectric devices to convert heat into electricity with silicon nanotubes. The nanotubes are one-dimensional structures: that means that the nanotubes have length but no width or height from a physical standpoint. One-dimensional objects (like carbon nanotubes) are ideal for conducting heat or power because it is difficult to scatter or deflect whatever is being transported. It's like a maglev train for molecules.

Phononic Devices, a collaboration between Caltech, the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Oklahoma are looking at waste heat capture devices. Oklahoma has been researching how to employ silicon nanowires in this way.

California's Alphabet Energy has also been working on silicon nanowire waste heat devices. Majumdar oversaw some of the work conducted by Alphabet and Photonic and MC10 just got grants from ARPA-E. Imagine that.

If California utilities weren't already working on their smart grid plans, a new state law has given them a deadline to catch up to.

That's July, 1, 2011 – the date set in California Senate Bill 17, passed earlier this month, for each "electrical corporation" to deliver a broad smart grid implementation plan to the California Public Utilities Commission for approval.

But first, the CPUC will have to have its own plan to judge utility plans against. That plan is due by July 1, 2010, according to the bill.

Think of it as the state-by-state coordination with still-developing federal smart grid policy. That work is being coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and represents a gargantuan effort to make sure smart grid technologies and systems work together (see Smart Grid Standards Roadmap Unveiled).

NIST's most recent smart grid roadmap sets a range of deadlines for handling top standards and interoperability issues, but all are set to be completed by the end of 2010 – six months before California's law would require utilities to report their own plans.

Of course, California utilities haven't been waiting to start deploying smart meters, distribution automation and demand response systems, and other pieces of smart grid technology.

The three big investor-owned utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric – are deploying smart meters by the millions, and have plans for extending more energy information awareness and control to those smart metered customers.

They're also looking ahead to storing energy on the grid – an important consideration when looking at the state's aggressive goals to get a third of its power from renewable resources by 2020 (see PG&E Wants DOE Dollars for Underground Air Energy Storage and SoCal Edison Wants A123's Biggest Grid Battery Ever).

Public utilities such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District are also laying smart grid plans (see DOE's $3.4B Smart Grid Grant Program: The Winners).

Tokyo correspondent Hayashi Sakawa points out that A123 systems has entered into an alliance with IHI, a large equipment maker, to collaborate on products for the transportation, industrial and marine markets.

IHI is one of those huge companies you've never heard of. It is 155 years old and works with Toyota, Mitsubishi and others. The reference to the marine market is interesting. Ports seem poised for a green overhaul, according to Julian Gresser of Manatt, Phelps. (Gresser has also taught international law at Harvard.) For one thing, they are dirty. Most of the equipment runs on diesel fuel. For another, they are often located near research universities and large industrial hubs, making them ideal incubators for new technologies.

"Eighty percent of every major industry depends on ports yet there is not a single mention of ports in the energy bill," he told us earlier this year. Some companies, such as Vycon, have begun to market cranes with regenerative power production to reduce fuel consumption. Others have proposed plates that can absorb kinetic energy from passing trucks. Travis Bradford also tells me that green shipping is growing.

A123 and IHI could find quite a lot of opportunities in marine.

Install an ice maker; get a tax break.

Congressional representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA), Wally Herger (R-CA) and Earl Pomeroy (D-S.D.) have introduced the Thermal Energy Cooling and Heating Act of 2009 (HR 3918) that would give a 30 percent tax credit and accelerated depreciation to individuals or businesses that install thermal energy systems that reduce peak demand.

The primary thermal energy system on the market today that fits this description is the ice cooler marketed by both Ice Energy and Calmac. In these systems, ice is made at night when power is cheaper (or generated but not consumed). It then melts during the day: Heat exchangers allow the chilly vapors to circulate through the building and cool them.

The definition also seems to include solar air conditioners, which use heat collectors and evaporating refrigerants to cool buildings. Chromasun is working on those.

There are a couple of trends wrapped into this bill:

1. Energy efficiency is getting more attention. Right now, businesses that install solar receive a 30 percent tax credit. You can get an 30 percent tax credit for energy efficiency retrofits, but only for the first $1,500 of work. The Thermal Act provides what seem to be comparable incentives. Secretary of Energy Steve Chu has long been a supporter of improving building energy efficiency.

2. Waxman-Markey may get piecemeal'ed. The bill hasn't passed yet, of course. And if it doesn't, expect to see a flurry of bills that concentrate on very specific parts of the overall bill. Efficiency enjoys bipartisan support. It cuts power consumption and generally can help create jobs because much of the revenue is generated from installation.

3. Air conditioning is cool and lots of new companies have come into the market (see the cavalcade here). In all, air conditioners gobble up around 5.2 percent of the total energy in the U.S. and about 10 percent of the electricity. (Building operations account for around 39 percent of U.S. power according to the Department of Energy and 13 percent of that power in residential and commercial buildings goes to air conditioners.) Not only are air conditioners themselves inefficient, the sensors and other mechanisms often aren't networked property for dynamic control. Walk around your building and count the female co-workers who are wrapped up in Snuggies sometime.

4. Air conditioning is going to get even cheaper. Utilities are currently contemplating programs under which they would pay for new AC units. A rebate and a tax credit? What CFO could say no?

I moderated a panel on Tuesday on Concentrating Photovoltaics (CPV) at the Solar Power International show in Anaheim.

I am an unlikely choice for the CPV moderator role as I have not always heaped praise on the CPV industry (see here and here). 

But I kept an open mind, and our panel explored the progress that CPV has made and the challenges that lie ahead.

Our panelists:

• Hansjörg Lerchenmüller, CEO, Concentrix Solar  

• Mark Crowley, President and CEO, SolFocus 

• Joseph Budano, CEO, Energy Innovations   

• Jerry Bloom, Partner and Chair, Energy Practice at Winston & Strawn  

Jerry Bloom, a longtime energy and renewables attorney at Winston served as a reality check – reminding us that solar competes with 4 cent per kilowatt hour coal and cheap nuclear power. And that renewables face an uphill battle in making inroads in the dominant energy energy mix.

But the CEOs of these CPV firms, selected for this panel because they are on the cusp of full-scale commercialization, are driven and optimistic and they made these points:

• CPV is just at the beginning of its cost curve.  Concentrix' Lerchenmüller sees CPV achieving costs of 30 cents per Watt in a few years.

• CPV with high-efficiency triple-junction solar cells behaves better than silicon in high temperatures.

• CPV doesn't require water like CSP and unlike CSP scales to smaller deployments.

• Notably, the price of capex for CPV is much less than that of other PV technologies: $0.10 to $0.15 per Watt compared to First Solar at about $1 per Watt and a-Si at about $3 per Watt.

• CPV, at least for these three firms, is becoming a "bankable" and credible technology.

NREL CPV expert Sarah Kurtz noted that the anticipated timeline for CPV has been far exceeded with Energy Innovations and the company's 1200 sun system claims a module efficiency of 29 percent. 

All of the CEOs expected the prices of the solar cells to drop. Lerchenmüller spoke of the parallel between those cells, which are essentially LEDs, having to follow the falling price trajectory of LEDs whether they come from Emcore, Spectra, Azure Space or one of the newcomers like Cyrium or Solar Junction.

And impressively, between the three CPV firms on the panel – there is the potential for almost 100 megawatts of factory capacity within the next year.

These firms still face the competitive challenge of plunging silicon costs and the difficult financing environment.   But, of the more than 45 VC-funded CPV firms, many of them doomed, these three hardy firms have a decent chance of surviving and succeeding.

Heating, air conditioning and ventilation account for 32 percent of the energy consumed in commercial buildings and lighting consumes another 25 percent, according to the 2008 Buildings Energy Data Book. Cypress Envirosystems and Adura Technologies are going to work together to reduce it.

Cypress, a division of Cypress Semiconductor, has developed a radio controlled thermostat that can replace the pneumatic thermostats deployed in most buildings built before 1995.

"You can't control them [pneumatic thermostats] remotely," said Harry Sim, CEO of Cypress Envirosystems. "They are compressed air."

Cypress' thermostat costs about $500 and installs in a few minutes. Google, Kaiser Permanente and Stanford have all installed the thermostats. (You need a single thermostat for roughly every 1,000 square feet of floor space, said Sim.)

Adura, funded by VantagePoint Venture Partners, has devised a controller for lighting systems. In tests with PG&E, Adura managed to cut power going to lights in a building by over 72 percent.

By combining together, the two companies say they can cut building power consumption by 30 percent to 50 percent. Cypress will sell Adura's equipment and vice versa. Over time, the two companies will try to synchronize their software so that it comes across more as a seamless solution. The technology from Cypress and Adura also work with the building management systems from incumbents like Johnson Controls and Honeywell.

Along with energy efficiency retrofits, building management has turned into a growth market in the past few years. Both the Federal government and the state of California have already passed initiatives to ensure that new commercial buildings will be net-zero energy structures by 2030. While solar will provide power, a substantial portion of the net-zero goal will be accomplished through clever conservation.

And each building adds up. Sim noted that California's baseline power requirement is around 35,000 gigawatts and the peak power requirement is around 55,000 gigawatts. That 20,000-gigawatt gap between baseline and peak is largely consumed by air conditioners flipping on on a hot summer day.

For every one project that got a piece of $3.4 billion in Department of Energy stimulus grants on Tuesday, three projects didn't.

But while the 100 winning projects may have won on the technical merits, that doesn't mean the 300 that didn't make the cut are lacking in quality, DOE advisor Matt Rogers said in announcing the awards (see DOE's $3.43B Smart Grid Grant Program: The Winners).

Still, utilities with projects that didn't make Tuesday's list are likely weighing their options for how – or if – to continue without DOE funding.

Several utilities had asked for extra money to speed up ongoing smart grid projects. Those will likely continue, if not as fast as they could have.

Dominion Virginia Power, for example, didn't get $200 million to speed up its deployment of 2.4 million smart meters, and Austin Energy missed out on the $113 million it was seeking to help support its $230 million plan to build out smart grid systems across its service area (see Grant Watch: Austin Energy, Oncor Seek Millions More for Smart Grid).

Some utilities filed multiple requests that added up to more than the $200 million maximum. Some of those got only partial funding.

Atlanta-based Southern Co., for example, only got $164 million of the $362 million it had sought (see Green Light post). Pepco won $149 million, but had asked for $254 million (see Baltimore Business Journal).

Texas-based Oncor, which had sought a total of $317 million in three applications to support both smart meter and distribution grid automation projects, didn't get any grant funding (see Oncor Makes $317M Smart Grid Stimulus Pitch).

Other projects that didn't get grants haven't started yet, but were part of utilities' longer-range plans. Whether or not they can go forward or will have to be scaled back or shelved will depend on many factors, including how much funding they've already secured versus how much they'll have to ask state regulators to approve via customer rate hikes.

Pacific Gas & Electric, for example, didn't get the $42.5 million it had sought to boost its plan to deploy energy management devices to about 75,000 small businesses and homes in San Jose, Calif. (see PG&E Asks Cisco to Help Make 75K Businesses Energy Wise).

Still, the utility will move forward with a smaller-scale project with funding already approved as part of its $2.2 billion, 10 million smart meter deployment, PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said Tuesday.

Other proposals that weren't on Tuesday's winners list include:

• Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities, which had sought grants of about $126.5 million, or up to half the cost of its $253 million smart grant plan.
• National Grid, a U.K.-based company with operations in the United States, had asked for $200 million for a smart grid program for about 200,000 customers in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
• St. Louis, Miss.-based Ameren Corp. has sought $185 million for two of its subsidiary utilities in Missouri and Illinois.
• Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison had asked for $175 million to boost its 141,000 smart meter deployment (see Green Light post).
• The Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago (BOMA Chicago) had wanted $93 million to create a "virtual generator" out of 260 office buildings linked for energy control (see BOMA Chicago's $93M Smart Grid Stimulus Pitch).