"CO2-G [CO2 Geothermal] is projected to have the lowest cost of any form of energy and is the only source of energy that permanantly sequesters carbon."

Those are the words of Mark Muir, co-founder of GreenFire Energy, a startup with an innovative twist on geothermal energy. 

Conventional geothermal energy entails tapping a heat source at relatively shallow depths and capturing the heat as steam to turn a turbine. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) create geothermal energy in hot dry rock by sending pressurized water down an injection well. Water travels through fissures, capturing the heat of the rock when it is forced out of a second well as hot water, which is then converted into electricity via a steam turbine or a binary power plant.  The cooled water is sent back into the earth to heat up again.

GreenFire dispenses with the water and instead uses carbon dioxide as the geothermal "feedstock."

"Geothermal ends up with the lowest cost – but conventional geothermal has big cooling towers and pumps. Hopefully we can get away from all that," adds Muir.

He projects that Carbon Dioxide Geothermal (CO2-G) can have a lower LCOE than any other scalable form of energy.

According to the CEC (California Energy Commission), there are 43 operating geothermal power plants with an installed capacity of about 1,750 megawatts in California, almost two-thirds of the United States' 3 gigawatts of geothermal generation. Geothermal energy production in the U.S. is a $1.4 billion industry – far bigger than the U.S. solar market.  And unlike solar, geothermal power is baseload power – available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Iceland gets over a quarter of its electricity from geothermal sources.

GreenFire's CO2 can come from natural sources or from the emissions of coal plants.

One of the largest natural deposits of CO2 is located in the the St. Johns Dome, a region extending across Arizona and New Mexico. It is a perfect site for GreenFire because it has the CO2 resource, a thermal reservoir, access to transmission lines and there are two power plants right at the dome and four more within a 200-mile radius. GreenFire is in a joint venture with Enhanced Oil Resources, the company with the leases to the CO2.

So, in addition to producing low-cost geothermal power, CO2-G can actually find a use for the carbon captured from coal plants.

This is important. Coal provides 50 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and according to EPRI, The Electric Power Research Institute – coal is here to stay. EPRI predicts that coal will continue to dominate our electrical production. But in order to meet any carbon legislation, it's going to have to be coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). 

The U.S. DOE will be making $55 million available to develop advanced carbon capture technologies at existing power plants. An economical technology for CCS has not yet emerged. 

Although not involved in reducing the cost of carbon capture, Greenfire believes they can save up to $25 per ton in total CCS costs (which are predicted to be in the range of $40 to $80 per ton once the process becomes commercial). The energy for for carbon capture could be a third of the plant's output. CO2-G essentially provides the power for the Carbon Capture.

We covered available CCS technologies such as membranes, solvents, solid sorbents and condensed-phase capture in an article earlier this year.  

GreenFire has the option of harvesting the kinetic energy from the wellhead. Since CO2 expands much more than water – it creates a highly pressurized situation.  That expansion's kinetic energy can be harnessed by a new type of energy transducer, the "free piston linear alternator," from the likes of Greenwell Renewable Power.

GreenFire is a small company and is looking for funding.  Muir estimates that he'll need about five years and substantial backing to put together a demonstration site. "It's not inconceivable for the money to come from smart VCs" but the likely source would be funding from the coal industry, "because its a matter of life and death in a carbon constrained world," according to Muir. 

Muir estimates that 5 percent of the world's coal plants might be eligible for the GreenFire CCS technique.

With more than 18,000 attendees and about 900 exhibitors in Anaheim, Calif. (right near Disneyland) – Solar Power International is the largest solar trade show in the U.S. I'll be posting as frequently as I can from the event.

Last night was the opening reception with nearby fireworks and thousands of people milling to the sounds of the cover band that follows me around from city to city.  They played "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Play That Funky Music White Boy."  It was not funky.

The solar industry has succeeded in moving through an entire business cycle – from boom to bust to its current recovery. Trade shows have their own phases and cycles and SPI is now in the swimsuit models and "spokes model" in hot pants phase.

I spoke with a few PV inverter companies and they have an interesting problem – long lead times.  There is a components shortage and certain large inverter companies are quoting a five month (!) lead time. 

I ran into Greg Kelly (Sr. VP of Bus Dev) and Mike Childers (Chief Commercial Officer) of Miasole. Interesting news from them: They have achieved UL approval on their CIGS solar panels and are touting a 10.5 percent efficiency.  They claim a 60-megawatt capacity with 60 megawatts to come and look for a capex of 50 cents per watt.

More soon.

Siemens is the company that just can't resist.

The German industrial giant is considering purchasing solar cell maker Q-Cells, according to Reuters (via Forbes here.).

Earlier this month, Siemens bought solar thermal vendor Solel for $418 million. Earlier, it has bought an number of water companies and ramped up its investments in smart grid.

In a list of the top ten acquirers in greentech, we picked Siemens as number two, right behind General Electric.

This is a pattern you should get used to. Small, innovative startups often have tremendous technology, but they lack the capital, distribution networks and relationships to bring their ideas to fruition. Large conglomerates often fail to capitalize on the interesting stuff in their labs, but they do know how to buy stuff that seems to work and take it commercial. Thus, greentech will be a barbell market – a lot of small companies and a few large companies with not a lot of things in between.

As acquisitions spread, you can start to think of Silicon Valley as a farm system for conglomerates. That doesn't sit well with some: Didn't Silicon Valley win out over old-style conglomerates like Digital and IBM? Yes, but it doesn't mean it happens in every situation. Green startups are born to be bought.

And if Siemens isn't interested, start talking to Philips (two lighting acquisitions this year), Toshiba, TSMC, and Cisco Systems.

Project Nina, the $39,900 plug-in hybrid for upper middle class families, from Fisker Automotive will start moving into production in 2012, thanks to a deal that will allow Fisker to take over a General Motors plant in Delaware.

Federal stimulus dollars have paved the way for Fisker to get the plant. Fisker will come out with its first car, the almost $90,000 Karma, next year. Earlier, it had hoped to come out with the Karma this year, but it's the electric car industry, people. Delays are endemic.

Although very few electric cars are in production today, the Nina will come out in a market that will be increasingly crowded. By then, Nissan, General Motors and Ford will have released, respectively, the Leaf (2010), the Volt (2010) and the Focus (2011) and Ford will be ramping up for a plug-in hybrid too. Many other Japanese manufacturers and some South Korean will likely have cars out then too.

And then there is arch rival Tesla Motors, which says the $57,000 Model S comes out in 2011. Panasonic will make the batteries for the Model S.

Granted, plug-ins, hybrids and all-electrics will only constitute a fraction of the market by 2012. Hybrids now account for 3 percent of new car sales and by 2020 it should rise to 10 to 25 percent. Still, The Nina won't be the only plugger in the showroom. Good news for consumers, but it makes it tougher for Fisker.

How can you be against the smart grid? Or against smart meters?

Isn't it like being anti-motherhood or anti-apple pie or anti-education? Apparently not, according to a recent citizen uprising in Fresno. And a recent smart grid panel I moderated.

First the panel. I moderated a relatively contentious panel at the Netherlands America Foundation on Thursday night. Execs from smart grid hardware and software startups including:

• Tony de Rijk, CEO of iDo Technology 
• Joris Jonker, CEO of Home Automation Europe  
• Rich Celio, CTO of Applied Power Technology  

All chimed in with the warning that:

• A $2.2 billion meter deployment would have a questionable ROI if most of the savings came from reduced truck rolls 
• The smart meters were not smart enough
• Consumers don't want Big Brother controlling their thermostat and appliances

Even a panelist from the SF PUC was dubious of the value of the smart meters. As for the firms themselves, APT has been profitably integrating smart energy systems in the enterprise for 15 years – deploying smart energy before the term was invented.  iDo and HAE are start-ups looking to add intelligence to the building or home energy system but not at the meter.

On to the citizen uprising...

Excerpts from an October 22 article in The Fresno Bee:

More than 100 people packed a town hall meeting in downtown Fresno to vent their frustration with PG&E's newest metering technology – SmartMeters – that customers say has led to faulty spikes in utility bills. "The meters, in my opinion, are not very smart," PG&E customer Joe Riojas told Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, D-Shafter. The meeting lasted four-and-a-half hours. No one spoke in favor of the Smart Meters.

Many customers brought their PG&E bills to show Florez their skyrocketing costs. For example, Don Vercellini of Fresno said his bill recently went from $500 a month to $1,173. "It's straight-out fraud. I want my money back," he said.

Florez complained that the technology for customers to check usage will not be in place for years.

Said Florez: "People don't see the value [in this program]. They just see higher cost, and that makes them angry."

You wouldn't like Fresno when it's angry.

Jeff St. John blogged about it here. According to St. John's reporting: Those complaints have focused attention on PG&E's $2.2 billion, 10 million smart meter deployment, with the California Public Utilities Commission demanding that PG&E find a third party to investigate.

But PG&E has already tested many customers' smart meters – made by General Electric and Landis+Gyr and networked by Silver Spring Networks – and have not found any problems with how they're working, according to PG&E spokesman Denny Boyles.

Rather than malfunctioning meters, PG&E thinks the higher bills have come from its two rate hikes in the past 12 months, plus a hot summer that led to many Central Valley residents cranking their air conditioners to beat the heat, Boyles said.

With the feds ready to launch another wave of smart grid funding – it would be helpful for the public to actually want these products and services. And to actually feel some immediate benefit and value from the smart grid.

It can't be just about benefits for the utilities.

The Department of Energy is set to announce winners of $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus grants on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

There are hundreds of applications in to DOE's $3.4 billion smart grid investment grant program, which makes up the lion's share of $3.9 billion the department has set aside for bringing two-way communications and information technology to the nation's electricity grids (see DOE Issues Rules for $3.9B in Smart Grid Stimulus Grants). DOE representatives had said winners wouldn't be announced until next week at the earliest, making this a bit of a surprise announcement (see Green Light post).

Add up all the requests to the program, and they come to several times more than the amount available, so there are sure to be some disappointed losers — as well as happy winners — among the smart grid set tomorrow. But with utilities generally picking lots of partners from a relatively small pool of smart grid companies, there may well be enough wealth to go around (see Green Light post).

The GridWise Alliance, a trade group of smart grid companies, is already praising the effect the stimulus will have on business. In fact, waiting for stimulus has kept many utilities from doing much smart grid business at all, according to the industry. That's created a lull that looks likely to break tomorrow.

One interesting question is how closely the DOE will stick to its promise to award about 40 percent of the $3.4 billion in individual grants of $20 million or less — a move to support smaller utilities in their bids for projects. On the other hand, many large utilities have made the maximum $200 million requests to the remaining 60 percent of the program's funding.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu thinks a three-for-37 home run average is just fine.

That is, out of the 37 "high-risk, high-reward" energy technology projects funded by the Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) program on Monday, "If we can get three home runs, that's terrific," Chu said.

Chu was speaking at Google's campus in Mountain View, Calif. on Monday to mark DOE's first, $151-million round of grants from the ARPA-E project, meant to boost experimental energy technologies.

Among the 37 winners were several Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinouts – 1366 Technologies, SunCatalyx, FastCap Systems and FloDesign Wind Turbine – as well as winners ranging from General Motors to a host of university research projects (see MIT, Storage, 'Direct Solar' Among DOE Research Grant Winners).

All are aiming for "transformative" technologies that can change the energy industry in a way similar to the Internet's effect on information technology, Chu said – thus, the appearance at Google.

Which projects might be home runs? Chu didn't specify, but mentioned boosting renewable energy from wind and solar, replacing fossil fuels for transportation, and finding ways to capture and store carbon from coal-fired power plants as likely candidates.

ARPA-E was created in the 2007 energy bill but wasn't funded until the stimulus package directed about $400 million to it (see Green Light post). Chu declined to say when ARPA-E would next announce grants, beyond saying that announcements could come "very, very soon."

Among the billions of dollars in grants and loans DOE is putting toward renewable energy, smart grid, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage projects, ARPA-E represent the most risky (see DOE Stimulus Spending: $17B So Far, $30B by Year's End).

But Chu said they're necessary to help the United States regain the initiative in what he called the "second industrial revolution, which the world needs to go through."

"If we look at China, they're now spending more than $100 billion a year in developing clean energy," he noted (see GridWeek: Chu Lays Out DOE's Smart Grid Vision, Standards to Come).

Chu also said that legal caps on emitting greenhouse gases would be critical for boosting a U.S. green technology revolution – something he said he plans to tell the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as it takes up a controversial energy and climate bill that includes a cap-and-trade provision to limit CO2 emissions from energy producers and other big emitters (see Green Light posts here and here).

In a talk with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Chu mentioned a few other focuses of the DOE, including finding ways to reuse more enriched uranium created in nuclear power plants to fuel new generations of reactors (see The U.S. Left Behind in Nuclear).

He also said he'd push for policies to incentivize new electricity transmission lines to carry renewable power, as well as find ways to make them big enough to be expanded over the decades (see Tres Amigas: Triple-Linking Transmission Grids and Green Light post).