Here's a novel lab experiment, courtesy of Tetsuo Nozawa at Nikkei Electronics: it's an LED powered by candle flame. Check out the photo at the above link. The heat from the candle goes through a thermoelectric material and is converted to electricity, which powers the LED. Nozawa saw it at Nextreme Thermal Solutions. The LED actually shines brighter than the candle flame because most of the energy in the candle is dissipated as heat. In LEDs, most of the energy gets consumed in producing light. Thermoelectric materials like bismuth telluride have been studied for decades. Researchers, however, have begun to experiment with different types of materials (such as germanium) that they say can convert heat to light and vice versa much more efficiently. Companies trolling in thermoelectrics include GMZ Energy, Promethean Power, and Cypress Semiconductor. UC Berkeley is concocting some startups too. Although thermoelectric materials technically exploit waste heat, most of the waste heat companies that have been in the market for years use very different underlying technologies. These companies typically capture heat, compress it, and then use the resulting pressure to run a turbine and create electricity. Alternatively, they pipe the heat back into the factory to warm water or offices.

On the eve of Macworld, the rumors are buzzing that Apple will release a new notebook that features batteries from ZPower, which makes a silver zinc battery. Ross Dueber, CEO of ZPower, declined to comment. ZPower has a deal with a notebook manufacturer, but it's up to the unknown manufacturer to make any comments, he said. (Ross is speaking at CES in Las Vegas on Thursday so we might get more there.) However, looking at all of the circumstances, I believe that the odds are pretty good, around 50 percent. Here's why: 1. ZPower has already said that they have landed a notebook win with a major manufacturers and that the deal will be announced in early 2009. Macworld is this week. 2. Selecting ZPower would allow Apple to claim a first. Right now, notebook makers virtually rely exclusively on lithium ion batteries. ZPower's batteries are based on a silver zinc chemistry. It's been tough to make rechargeable zinc batteries that can last -- Thomas Edison himself worked on the problem -- but both ZPower and competitor PowerGenix, which makes a nickel zinc battery, say they've solved that problem. Zinc batteries are less prone to "thermal runaway reactions." Zinc batteries will also be able to store far more energy than lithium ion cells as time goes on, say advocates. Lithium cells, they argue, have peaked. Zinc potentially could become a really large business for a lot of applications. These wouldn't be the first zinc batteries on the market. PowerGenix started selling some last month. But these would be the first in a notebook. Thus, Apple could hold itself out as an innovator by being the first to come out with a zinc notebook. You can just imagine the obligatory gushing at Macworld now. 3. Love or hate it, Apple is good at harvesting components. The touch pad from Synaptics and the 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drives effectively allowed the company to make the first iPods. No one else really wanted the 1.8-inch drive. With some careful component shopping and good design, Apple was able break into a new category. 4. ZPower (formerly Zinc Matrix Power) has a long history. It got started back in the '90s. Thus, the company can provide a lot of testing materials to notebook makers. 5. ZPower is also heavily associated with Intel. Intel even invested in it. Despite some friction, Apple and the Big I still collaborate. 6. The other new age battery companies I've contacted don't have announcements coming up. I haven't called them all, but some. 7. Some other large notebook makers have already selected their new age battery supplier. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, has said it will offer a lithium-ion battery from Boston Power as an option in some notebooks. Sony and Toshiba, which both make lithium ion batteries, are a little less hot on the new battery category. 8. The zinc batteries will likely come at a premium and Apple has had a knack for getting its fan base to look beyond price points. 9. Tom Krazit, an former colleague at CNET, says it makes sense for Apple to do a new notebook this week. But, again, nothing is guaranteed. Here's a list of other notebook makers that could be interested in zinc batteries: Dell, Acer, Lenovo. And the Macworld coincidence may be getting overplayed. Last April, Dueber said that ZPower's batteries were slated to come out in a thin laptop in August 2008. Didn't happen.

We began tracking venture capital investment in Greentech in 2004 when the sector really didn’t have a name and represented only 1 percent of VC investment totals.

Companies like Nanosolar and Miasolé were just getting started and most VC investors were simply trying to get their heads around this relatively underinvested trillion dollar market.

A few years later, Greentech VC investment represents about 20 percent of the VC asset class -- 2008 finished with a total VC investment of more than $7.7 billion in more than 350 funding rounds, roughly one investment a day, with time off for Christmas and New Years.

Greentech Media just released the most recent quarterly data showing that venture capital investment in green technologies exceeded $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, a modest decrease from the previous quarter’s total of $2.9 billion.

We asked Erik Straser, a partner at leading cleantech investor Mohr Davidow Ventures and an insightful analyst of these markets to weigh in on these numbers and here are his comments:

“2008 marks the 'end of the beginning,' an end to the first few years of investment enthusiasm.  In the next period, we’ll see investors focus on strong investor syndicates, management teams that have proven they can execute, and value propositions that can truly deliver differentiated economics to the world’s largest markets.�

Rob Day of @Ventures weighed in on his blog last month with his take on the state of greentech investing. His presentation on the subject is here.

Rob sees cause for worry in the way the VC model tracks greentech startup timelines. No argument there -- it takes a long time and a lot of money to scale a new solar or biofuel technology to meaningful volumes. But he also saw a shortage of early stage investors and I’m not sure the numbers bears that out.

My preliminary data shows that investors continue to fund early-stage deals as well as later-stage deals. At least 30 of the 115 greentech deals this quarter were seed stage or A rounds.

Rob also saw the need for VCs to enlarge their scope and stop focusing on solar and biofuels. And VCs seem to be doing just that -- they are digging deep in the greentech sector and looking outside traditional technologies at previously underinvested areas like energy storage, energy efficiency, recycling, water, cleaner coal and green IT.

Still, the IPO door is closed for now and probably for the next four to six quarters. And although consolidation in this market has already begun -- meaningful, profitable VC-scale acquisitions will also be scarce for the foreseeable future.

“We will continue to see investors allocate capital, albeit more cautiously, to cleantech as the underlying macro forces driving cleantech remain unchanged and cleantech looks well positioned to be a significant part of the new administration,� Straser added.

Startups will need to work harder and smarter and VCs will need to be patient. Look for 2009 to be the year of smart grid, energy storage and energy efficiency.

Like him or not, at least President-elect Barack Obama isn't spending all his free time at a ranch. In his weekly address to the nation (see clip here) Obama said that he wants to "double renewable energy production" as well as create three million new jobs. Although he didn't specify how many of those jobs would be in the green sector, it's a good bet that he means a lot of them. Over 80 percent of those new jobs will be in the private sector. He also wants to kick off a program to renovate public buildings for energy efficiency, a topic that incoming Secretary of Energy Steve Chu has championed for years. Contractors, get ready: You work in what will become one of the huge growth sectors in the economy. "Nearly two million lost their jobs last year and millions more are working in jobs that pay less with fewer benefits," he said. Of course, delivering on this will be tougher than promising it. Doubling renewable energy production won't exactly reverse global warming or eviscerate OPEC either. As the Energy Information Administration points out in its comprehensive surveys, renewables remain a fairly low fraction of the energy pie in the U.S. Renewable electric power only accounted for 7 percent of the total energy in the U.S. in 2006. Biomass and hydroelectric account for 90 percent of that 7 percent. Wind only accounts for 4 percent and solar only one percent. Together, that makes wind and solar 5 percent of 7 percent, or 0.35 percent. The report came out in 2008, but it takes a while to assess all the data. Still, even if you factor forward you can bet that solar is bigger, but still a very small contributor. The Department of Energy and ThinkEquity also reported last month that companies will likely miss their targets for producing cellulosic ethanol. But it's a start.

Have you had trouble keeping track of smart metering projects? So have we, which is why we're glad to see the Smart Metering Projects Map run by the Energy Retail Association in the UK. The map essentially pinpoints smart metering projects across Europe, North America, Oceania and Asia on a zoom-able Google map. If you click on one of the flags, a few paragraphs pop up explaining the scope and purpose of the project. Distrigaz Sud, for instance, is installing 1.1 gas meters in southern Romania to offset gas network balancing concerns. The meters in the trial utilize snap-on Zigbee devices to permit communication. In Kyrgyzstan, a utility will test out pre-paid gas meters. (Pre-paid gas meters used to be a common fixture in the U.K. after World War II and are going to be trialed in parts of the U.S. for lower-income housing developments.) And my personal favorite, Bosnia Herzegovina's Elektroprivreda HZ HB Mostar is installing meters that communicate through power-line networking provided by Echelon. Echelon has also landed deals, and installed, power line-enabled meters and street lights in Italy, Norway and Texas. Italy already has 30 million smart meters, according to the map, which makes the country one of the more popular nations for smart meters. Elektroprivreda will initially only put in 200 meters but wants to boost the number to 200,000. There are no projects yet, according to the map, in South America or Africa, but there are proposals in the works for South Africa. At the risk of sounding redundant, smart metering will be one of the major issues and market for greentech in 2009 and beyond. Proponents say that smart meters and demand response programs can substantially curb greenhouse gases and energy consumption by more finely controlling the distribution and consumption of electricity, water and natural gas. Electrical grids, water utilities and gas pipelines, however, weren't designed with two-way communication and control in mind so bringing intelligence to these systems will require investments in networking, hardware and software. Contact Simon Harrison if you want to collaborate or have questions.

Reports are circulating today that Toyota is secretly working on a completely solar powered car, citing The Nikkei. Here's the take from the Associated Press. "According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources." Something may be getting lost in the translation. I can see the first part being true. Toyota could put solar panels on the roof of the car to power some internal electronics. Fisker is doing that with the Karma and General Motors has put solar panels on the roof of some incredibly ugly concept cars, so it's technically feasible. The solar panels could even provide some power to a lithium-ion battery pack. A full recharge would take several hours but you could imagine solar panels on the roof of a plug-in a sunny parking lot getting some juice like this. (That brings up the problem of early battery degradation from too many charges but let's save that for another time.) I could even see a car that could be partly charged be stationary solar panels (A recharge would take time, but technically it's a piece of cake.). But to completely power a car with solar panels that it carries around on its own would take one massive solar array to charge in a reasonable (seven hours) amount of time. The Tesla Roadster has a battery that needs to provide 200 kilowatts of power and/or store 50 kilowatts of power, for example. A solar array to feed a battery of that size adequately would be bigger than most of those found on homes. Concentrators -- which could reduce the square footage of solar cells needed would be tough to apply here too. They need a direct angle of sunlight so you'd have to rotate the solar cells on the car roof. Thin film? Low efficiency. Plus, there are the power requirements for acceleration and freeway speeds. That's why today's solar powered cars are golf carts used in retirement communities. They top out at 15 miles per hour or so. It would be a lot easier to charge the car from stationary solar panels built into a garage or a building. Another suspicious bit: I haven't been able to find a translation of the Nikkei article yet. So expect updates. Technically speaking, however, all Toyota vehicles are solar powered. The energy from petroleum comes frmo decayed plant and animal matter, which originally got their energy from the fiery orb in the sky.

P3 International (P3) is a New York consumer electronics company that makes the Kill A Watt electric power meter.  The Kill A Watt meter allows consumers to determine how much energy particular appliances are using.  You simply plug the meter into the wall, plug the appliance into the meter, and monitor the energy consumption of the appliance on the meter’s LCD display. The Kill A Watt meter is protected by U.S. Patent No. 6,095,850 (’850 patent), which is directed to an electric adapter (1) having a plug (2) on its rear side which can be plugged into an electric socket (7).  The adapter has an outlet socket with three holes (3a, 3b, 3c) on the front and a display (4) to show electrical parameters of the appliance being monitored. When the user presses the display mode selection switch (6) the display (4) shows, in sequence, voltage level, current value, watt, kilowatt-hour, apparent power value and power factor. P3 is the exclusive licensee of the ‘850 patent.  In June, P3 sued SmartLabs Inc. (SmartLabs), UPM Marketing Inc. and UPM Technology USA, inc. (collectively “UPM�) in federal court in Manhattan alleging that the electric device makers were infringing the ‘850 patent. According to the complaint (p3_complaint.pdf), UPM’s infringing devices are the EM100, EM130, EM338 and EM369 Plug-in Energy Meters infringe, and SmartLabs also imports and sells some of UPM’s meters.  The complaint also alleged that SmartLabs intends to import and sell an infringing “Save-A-Watt� energy meter. In August, the defendants filed counterclaims for declaratory judgment of noninfringement, invalidity and unenforceability of the ‘850 patent (smartlabs_answer.pdf). This month Judge Denise L. Cote signed a stipulation and order (p3_order.pdf) temporarily enjoining SmartLabs from making, importing, offering for sale or selling the Save-A-Watt meter pending the result of the lawsuit. The temporary injunction ordered by Judge Cote is one component of an agreement between P3 and SmartLabs to narrow the issues and focus the case.  The two parties also agreed to sever from the suit the issue of SmartLabs’ infringement of the ‘850 and to dismiss with prejudice SmartLabs’ counterclaim of noninfringement. Thus, the case between P3 and SmartLabs will only go forward on the issues of validity and enforceability of the ‘850 patent.  If P3 prevails and at least one claim of the patent is found to be valid and enforceable, SmartLabs will be permanently enjoined from moving forward with its Save-A-Watt meter:

It is further stipulated and agreed that, once this case is finally terminated by order, judgment, decree, dismissal, settlement or otherwise, if any one of claims 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 or 11 of United States Patent No. 6,095,850 has not been adjudged to be invalid or unenforceable, SmartLabs shall be permanently enjoined, by this Stipulation and Order, from making, importing into the United States, selling or offering for sale the Save-A-Watt during the term of that patent.

Since SmartLabs hasn’t sold any of the allegedly infringing devices yet, there are no money damages to be gained by P3 through a full court press on infringement.  This stipulation is a good example of a sensible, efficient approach to patent litigation (in contrast to the Nichia-Seoul Semiconductor lawsuit I blogged about here and here) where the parties expend legal fees and use court time only as necessary to decide the issues that actually matter for disposition of the case. Eric Lane is a patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, where he is in the Intellectual Property and Climate Change & Clean Technology practices.  Eric is the founder and author of Green Patent Blog, which provides discussion and analysis of intellectual property law issues in clean technology.