The market for developers of large-scale power projects has gotten a lot more crowded in the past year, as utilities across the United States stepped up efforts to buy renewable energy to meet state mandates.

Some of these newcomers are independent startup companies with executives who have some experiences in the energy business. Agile Energy, a new entrant, fits that profile.

Glen Davis, who left Ausra earlier this year, said Friday he expects to close the first round of equity financing soon to build his development team. I caught up with Davis after he spoke at the Solar Energy Investment and Finance Summit in San Francisco.

Davis, who didn't want to talk numbers before he finalizes the round, worked for power producer AES Corp. before he started Agile in 2004 with Rob Morgan, another AES veteran. The two worked on a gas-fired power plant initially and later a few photovoltaic projects before joining Ausra in 2006.

The two led Asura's efforts in securing power purchase agreements with utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in California and in corporate fundraising. Mountain View, Calif.-based Ausra changed its business model from a project developer to a solar steam equipment supplier earlier this year.

Davis and Morgan left Ausra in January this year to re-start Agile.

Agile would focus primarily on developing projects that are 20 megawatts or under and make use of solar panels, Davis said. Projects of that size would be large enough to entice investors and likely avoid issues such as finding suitable land and access to transmission lines, he said.

Lots of companies are eager to do business with utilities, from solar panel manufacturers to long-time power producers that are subsidiaries of large energy companies.

An example of a startup: Two-year-old NextLight Renewable Power has signed a deal to sell PG&E power from a 230-megawatt project.

An example of established player: PSEG Solar Source, part of a parent company that includes utilities in its portfolio, recently announced 2 projects of 27 megawatts total in Ohio and Florida. PSEG Solar already has power sale deals with utilities for those projects. 

IBM has landed three more deals to help utilities manage their water resources.

In Texas, the Lower Colorado River Authority utility is using IBM software to help manage resources and services covering more than 36,800 square miles and 2.2 million customers.

A similar project is bringing IBM $14.5 million from the Power and Water Corp., the water and electric utility serving about 80,000 customers in Australia's Northern Territory.

And in Japan, the Fukuoka District Waterworks Agency is using IBM software to help squeeze efficiencies out of its water system and improve water quality.

Water is getting to be big business for Big Blue, with projects ranging from flood control systems in the Netherlands and water and power efficiency improvements for the island nation of Malta's utility, to finding leaks in Dubuque, Iowa's water system and monitoring pollution and navigation hazards in the waters of Ireland's Galway Bay (see Green Light posts here and here).

All these smart water offerings come under IBM's $100 million 'Big Green Innovations' initiative. But managing water could be a $20 billion business opportunity, IBM estimates (see IBM Dives Into Smart Water Management).

The results can be water savings of nearly 30 percent for the most advanced water sensor and control systems, according to a pilot water management project at IBM's Burlington, Vt. semiconductor plant.

Much of the work IBM is doing in Texas and Australia right now is "helping the clients with a better grasp of their assets and infrastructure," to lay the groundwork for such infrastructure improvements to come, said Cameron Brooks, director of Big Green Innovations at IBM.

Still, they can pay off right away in letting utilities know where problems are occurring, schedule maintenance more wisely and prevent expensive breakdowns, he said.

Texas and Australia also face increasing water shortages and droughts, part of what many experts say could be a coming global water crisis influenced in part by climate change (see 'Peak Water' Requires Low-Cost Solution).

Moving and treating water can take lots of energy as well, and IBM is "definitely looking at opportunities to synchronize both energy assets and water assets" in projects like the €70 million ($89.9 million), five-year project it's undertaking with Malta's national water and electric utilities (see IBM Brings Smart Meters to Malta).

Microsoft's Hohm home energy platform will soon be able to deliver monthly energy use data for all of Xcel Energy's 3.4 million customers across eight states, all without smart meters. The two companies plan to announce the news on Friday at an event at Microsoft's campus in Fargo, N.D., a Microsoft spokesperson said Thursday.

Xcel is the second utility to link customer data to Hohm. Last month, Seattle City Light started offering its roughly one million customers a data feed of their utility bill information via the web platform.

That monthly billing data can be merged with information customers can input themselves about their household energy use to help better pinpoint ways to save energy (see Microsoft Launches Home Energy Site, Sees Devices, Demand Response in Future).

Xcel and Seattle City Light were two of four named utility partners for Hohm back when Microsoft launched it in June. The others were Puget Sound Energy and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, though they haven't yet said they're making billing data available through the home. Microsoft has said it is in discussions with  more utilities.

Monthly billing data can be delivered to customers without smart meters, which may give Hohm a larger audience at this stage. Home energy management startups such as Tendril, Control4, AlertMe, OpenPeak EnergyHub and many others may have to wait several years for utilities to start linking smart meters to home energy management systems at a scale beyond pilot projects, industry observers say (see Green Light post).

As for how Hohm differs from the many websites that allow homeowners to input information about their homes and get back tips for energy saving, Microsoft points to the advanced algorithms it uses, which were developed by the Department of Energy and its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Microsoft also has said Hohm eventually will be supported by real-time data from smart thermostats and smart plugs it expects to see rolled out by various hardware partners in the coming year.

Google, which launched its PowerMeter home energy interface effort in February, has shied away from asking homeowners to input their own information.

Rather, it has signed partnerships with a number of utilities, as well as smart meter maker Itron, to find ways to bring data from smart meters to customers. At the same time, it has announced partnerships with in-home energy monitoring equipment startups AlertMe and The Energy Detective, and has said it is seeking more such partners (See Green Light post and Google, British Gas Help AlertMe Launch Home Energy Control).

Ireland's OpenHydro and Nova Scotia Power have officially launched a tidal turbine in the Bay of Fundy in Canada capable of generating 1 megawatt of power.

The 400-ton device is located approximately three kilometers off shore and is producing power already.

Wave and tidal companies have for years touted ocean energy as a potential growth market, but it's been mostly characterized by missteps. Finavera Renewables dropped its experimental wave buoy into the drink off of the coast of Oregon in one experiment. Pelamis Wave Power sold 750 kilowatts worth of wave power equipment to a company that installed it off of the coast of Portugal. It worked for a bit, but then pulled in. It hasn't been on the seas since. Meanwhile, Pelamis tossed its CEO overboard a few weeks ago.

Small turbines off of the coast of Manhattan from Verdant were pulled in for repairs after installation.

OpenHydro's is the biggest commercial turbine, wave or tidal, to be deployed. It's an interesting device. Instead of three rotating blades, like a wind turbine, it is more like a kitchen fan. All the extra blades and steel give it survivability.

Here's a video of a test turbine from OpenHydro off the coast of Scotland. The sea captain is pretty entertaining too.

Sustainable Spaces is now Recurve and it's going national.

The company, which retrofits homes and small businesses, has largely worked in Northern California (one client had utility bills that came to $6,500 a month before a retrofit) but now it will expand to new geographies. Getting a made-up name from branding consultants is just one of those things you do to celebrate.

How does a residential contractor that's only five years old go national? The company is actually a software vendor in disguise. It has been studying home retrofits and writing applications that, ideally, will take the guesswork out of a home retrofit. Right now, contracting and retrofitting thrive on tribal knowledge: contractors each have their own tricks of the trade and live by them. Under Recurve's paradigm, it will enlist contractor/partners who will then plug variables into a computer – number and size of windows, number of individuals with respiratory problems in house, number of bedrooms, etc. – that will spit out good, better, best retrofit plans using Recurve's software.

The company employs a lot of ex-Googlers. The applications are why we picked Sustainable, whoops, Recurve, as one of the top ten companies in green software.

Behind the scenes, the company has something of a national profile already. Founder Matt Golden spends quite a bit of time lobbying for energy efficiency bills in D.C. and various state capitols.

"Over the past 5 years, the company has enjoyed phenomenal growth in revenue, doubling the business every year on average, mostly by referrals from satisfied clients. In 2009, one of the most challenging in history for the construction industry, Recurve grew revenues by 70% and employed nearly 70 people out of the San Francisco office. Recurve is the only home energy company in Northern California to be accredited by the Building Performance Institute, which sets national quality standards for the industry," the company stated.

Big smart meter maker Elster Group has announced a new CEO – Simon Berensford-Wylie, the former CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks.

Perhaps the move will lead to new partnerships between the two companies. German company Elster has been seeing rapid growth in smart meter deployments, along with its big rivals Itron, Landis+Gyr, General Electric and Sensus, and also makes gear to manage other parts of the so-called "smart grid" (see Green Light post).

Elster has deployed six million smart meters and other devices around the world, and reported revenues of €1.3 billion ($1.9 billion) in 2008, compared to 2008 revenues of $1.25 billion for its main smart metering rival in Europe, Swiss-based Landis+Gyr (see Landis+Gyr Raises $100M).

Nokia Siemens Networks, on the other hand, has been ailing of late. The joint venture of Nokia and Siemens announced earlier this month that it would seek to lay off about 5, 670 employees in a second round of job cuts amidst tough price competition in the global networking market (see Bloomberg).

But smart grid communications – such as networks that link smart meters with utilities – are seen as a growth area for telecommunications and networking giants the world over.

The $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus grants given out by the Department of Energy last month is expected to lead to 18 million smart meters installed in the next three years (see DOE's $3.4B Smart Grid Grant Program: The Winners).

And the European Union has set a 2022 deadline for every electrical meter to have some kind of two-way communications and control capability (see Green Light post).

A number of executives from utility, networking and energy giants have taken executive positions in smart grid startups such as Silver Spring Networks, Trilliant and GridPoint in recent months (see Green Light post).

Axion International – the company that makes building components like I-beams out of recycled plastic – is part of a group that has won a contract to build two bridges out of plastic at Fort Eustis. The bridges will span 80 feet and be capable of holding 130 tons.

Axion often works with the high grade plastic from recycled milk jugs.

Putting old plastic to productive use remains a small market, but it's interesting. Right now, countries have generally two options: Burn it for fuel or send it off to an emerging nation to be put in a landfill. Retrofitting it for a new use cuts landfill, of course, but it can also be more energy efficient than milling wood or steel. Other plastic fanatics: Valley Forge Fabrics, Sollega, Envion, and Ascent Solar.

"Plastics were the Great Satan," said Jim Kerstein, CEO of Axion International (AXIH) which makes building components like I-beams and girders out of recycled plastic. "You could pull a milk jug out of a landfill and say 'Good God! This has been here since 1973.' But if you take a negative and turn that around with an application that requires longevity, that's a positive."