Three Bright New Ideas in Biofuels, Solar and Wind Power

By Chris Morrison
January 21, 2010

The cleantech industry is a constant source of new ideas, for generating energy and for saving it. Many (or most) of these ideas never go anywhere, though. I try to pick out the ones that seem most likely to succeed; the easiest way to do so is look out for new venture capital fundings and pilot projects.

January is proving an especially fertile month, at least for announcements. The three latest companies that look interesting are split across three sectors: FloDesign Wind makes a new type of wind turbine, Joule Biotechnologies is a biofuel startup, and Solar Fusion Power, as you will have guessed, generates solar power with an unusual design.

I’ve split the three up below to give more detail on each; if that’s not enough, the links in each section have even more.

FloDesign Wind

FloDesign hasn’t been in hiding; the company previously won a technology competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for its alternate wind turbine design, which departs from the traditional “prop” design of a wind turbine with something that looks a lot more like a jet engine. The short explanation of how it works is that air going through the turbine’s rotor and over its cowl joins to cause a “pulling” effect on the air behind it, spinning the blades more quickly than they would otherwise move. The resulting design is a bit odd-looking, as you can see at right, but the basic idea is well proven. Pop over to Youtube to watch FloDesign’s video on their technology. But there are quite a few variations on the prop design, most of which turn out to be less practical based on factors like the amount of material or wind speed required for their use. How to pick through the pile? Unless you’re an expert in gas flow dynamics, it’s difficult to make objective measurements.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that FloDesign should get some attention, because some folks with fairly good judgment are busy throwing money its way. FloDesign won a $8.3 million grant from the the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, and more recently, announced a $34.5 million investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture firm with a sterling reputation.