I am coming back from a hiatus in May. One of the areas that got my attention recently is the emergence of Energy Storage as an area of excellence in the Bay Area. Lawrence Berkeley Lab recently announced of a new accelerator for start-ups in storage technologies and hosted a conference last week on the future of Lithium-Ion technology.
With new Electric Vehicles (EV) coming to market this year -- Telsa shipped its first Model S, not to a Hollywood celebrity but to one VC partner from DFJ -- it has emerged as the most versatile storage technology because of its ability to handle high power and high energy density applications and its good efficiency. Lithium Ion is fairly recent as Sony launched it in the 1990's. It has since spurred different variations.
Lithium Ion batteries for EV's have certainly had its shares of challenge, however. Are new technologies looking at making a splash on the market? Electricity is definitely one tech market to watch out for as it is critical to integrate renewable energies into the grid and meet our daily energy needs. Here are our top-5 picks...
Santa Barbara has become over the years a place of reference for technology leaders, Government agencies, industry actors and utilities to meet and tackle big energy problems. One of the highlights of this year Summit on Energy Efficiency was a panel on the Department of Energy’s SunShot initiative: achieving $1 per Watt of installed solar power. At stake is for the US to regain a predominant place in the sector. The US produced 43% of solar cells in 1995, 21% in 2000 and only 6% in 2010.
Some argue in investor circles that the battle has already been lost to China, which has taken over as the largest producer of solar panels. Solar is a $70Bn market and is still dominated by residential deployment with 70% of the 16 Giga Watts of solar cells deployed last year around the world. Despite major solar farm projects like SunPower’s 1.4 GW plant in Malaysia, Germany remains the leader in deployed capacity thanks to a consistent energy policy and an effective network of installers.
Every year the fiber infrastructure community meets at OFC, and the 2011 edition in Los Angeles confirms the trend: a new wave of applications is driving the next generation systems. Unmaginable several years ago. Google and Facebook representatives are active in the scientific community and pushing for higher bandwidth.
Video is the main bandwidth driver and router vendors are working for instance on "cashing" video content closer to users for the likes of Netflix and YouTube. "Networks cannot scale if videos are downloaded each time accross the country. Popular video content has to be stored locally and updated regularly" commented Ori Gerstel, Principal Engineer at Cisco.
Considered a "cousin" market, mobility represents also a new area of growth for wireline networks that provide backhaul from the 3G/4G base stations. The growth of wireless networks and fiber infrastructure is seen more tightly intertwined. Overall, every body is jumping on the bandwagon of fiber as it offers unparalleled bandwidth capacity and power efficiency.
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