IQwind and Guascor announce partnership agreement to commercialize innovative wind turbine technology

IQwind, an Israel-based start-up backed by Terra Venture Partners, and Guascor, a Spanish industrial company, announced today that they will partner to commercialize and bring to market the IQGear, a variable gearbox for the wind industry. The partnership brings together IQwind`s innovative wind turbine technology and the operational and market expertise of Guascor, an international leader in the production and distribution of renewable energy power systems.


Increasing the overall potential and cost-effectiveness of wind as an alternative renewable energy source, IQwind claims that its variable gear can be both retrofitted into existing turbines and utilized as a standard component in newly-manufactured turbines. The high efficiency IQwind technology can reduce the cost of energy (COE) by up to 20% compared to the best existing wind turbines, according to the company.

Guascor will manufacture the IQGear according to design and specifications provided by IQwind. To support the IQGear production, a new manufacturing line will be established in the Guascor Power facility in the Basque Country (Spain).

According to the agreement between the companies, the initial ten gearboxes manufactured by Guascor will be used for testing, certification, and initial commercial installations retrofitting currently-operational turbines during 2010. The companies will scale up to bring additional retrofitted and new turbines to the European market in 2011 and beyond. According to the agreement, IQwind will lead the sales, marketing and design activities and shall continue to own any resulting Intellectual Property (IP).

"The partnership with IQwind reinforces Guascor´s vision and its commitment to renewable energy," said Mr. Cesar Fernandez de Velasco, CEO of Guascor. "The IQwind variable gear is an important development in wind-powered energy generation. It addresses the long standing challenge of efficiently turning a variable wind source into stable electrical current, and can make an immediate impact on the economics of wind projects. Guascor is delighted to lend its
manufacturing muscle and the operational experience of its executives to advance the establishment of IQGear as the leading gear design in the wind energy market. We look forward to rolling this exciting technology out to the market as early as 2010."

"Guascor brings manufacturing and wind expertise, more than 50 years of leadership in the power system industry, and a unique renewable energy strategy. These attributes make the company an ideal partner for IQwind in bringing this unique technology for improving power generation efficiency to the wind energy market," said IQwind founder and CEO Gideon Ziegelman.

"Partnering with a prominent player such as Guascor is a resounding validation of the value our variable gear technology brings to the wind energy market," added Ziegelman. "The cooperation with Guascor and the significant investment they have committed to in this agreement will greatly accelerate the introduction of IQGear into the wind energy market. This collaboration is a major step towards the transformation of this new technology into a revenue
generating product."

Guascor is currently planning to build a large wind farm in Argentina. The $2.4 billion, 600-900MW project will be located in Pico Truncado and is expected to take three years to complete.

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BrightSource Energy and Bechtel to partner on solar thermal power plants

BrightSource Energy announced today that it has selected Bechtel, a leading engineering, construction and project management firm, as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the Ivanpah Solar Electricity Generating System.

The two companies also announced that Bechtel Enterprises, the project development and financing arm of the Bechtel organization, will become an equity investor in all of the Ivanpah solar power plants.

Under the terms of a series of EPC agreements, Bechtel will provide engineering, procurement, and construction services for the Ivanpah System – a 440 megawatt solar power facility consisting of three separate solar thermal power plants in southeastern California. The power generated from these solar plants will be sold under separate contracts established by BrightSource Energy with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE). BrightSource’s contracts with PG&E and SCE total 2.6 gigawatts.

“Combining Bechtel’s world-class EPC capabilities with BrightSource’s leading solar thermal energy team is a natural fit,” said John Woolard, BrightSource’s President and CEO. “We share a common vision of setting the standard in building environmentally-friendly solar power plants while creating jobs for local communities. We very much look forward to partnering with Bechtel on constructing the Ivanpah facility.”

BrightSource estimates that the Ivanpah facility will result in approximately 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction, 86 permanent jobs*, and total economic benefits of $3 billion. The plants will also displace more than 450,000 tons (408,000 metric tonnes) of CO₂ annually, which is the equivalent of taking more than 75,000 cars off the road.

The Ivanpah facility is scheduled to begin construction in early 2010 following final permitting by the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management. In December 2008, BrightSource signed an agreement with Siemens to purchase the largest ever solar-powered steam turbine generator for the first of the three Ivanpah plants.

The Ivanpah facility will utilize BrightSource Energy’s proven Luz Power Tower 550 technology (LPT 550). The LPT 550 solar system produces electricity the same way as traditional power plants – by creating high temperature steam to turn a turbine. However, instead of using fossil fuels or nuclear power to create the steam, BrightSource uses thousands of mirrors called heliostats to re­flect sunlight onto a boiler filled with water that sits atop a tower. When the sunlight hits the boiler, the water inside is heated and creates high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional tur­bine which generates electricity. This fully integrated approach takes advantage of high operating efficiencies and low capital costs to provide reliable and low-cost carbon-free energy.

The LPT 550 solar system is also designed to minimize the solar plant’s environmental impact, reducing the need for extensive land grading and concrete pads. In order to conserve precious desert water, LPT 550 uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in water usage compared to conventional wet-cooling. The water is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed process.

Today, LPT 550 is employed at the company’s Solar Energy Development Center (SEDC) in Israel’s Negev Desert. Operating over the past year, the SEDC is producing the world’s highest temperature turbine quality steam from solar energy.

BrightSource is the parent of Jerusalem, Israel-based BrightSource Industries Israel (BSII), formerly called Luz II. BSII performs R&D, production and project engineering for its California-based parent company.

BrightSource Seeking Partners in China and India

BrightSource is actively seeking partners in India and China as it looks to expand its reach outside the United States, Chief Executive John Woolard said yesterday, according to a report from Reuters.

Moving "slowly and deliberately," BrightSource could announce partners in those two nations a year from now, Woolard told the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco.

"We are talking to various large companies over there," Woolard said. "Generally partners that are large, have engineering capabilities and can really deliver on plant construction and get things done."

Woolard's comments came on the same day that First Solar Inc, made the first major foray by a U.S. company into the fast growing Chinese alternative energy sector with plans to build the world's largest solar plant there.

"It shows a few things," Woolard said of the First Solar announcement. "One is that the Chinese are willing to think at a size and scale that is meaningful... and it also shows that the Chinese are ready and willing to look at real projects and real money."

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Siemens, Areva, Alstom bidding for Israeli solar firm Solel

Siemens AG, Areva SA and Alstom SA, three of Europe’s largest engineering companies, are competing for control of Solel Solar Systems Ltd., as demand for renewable energy rises, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Solel, based in Beit Shemesh, Israel, is a leading developer of utility-scale solar thermal power plants. The bids from Siemens, Areva and Alstom may value Solel at $300 million to $400 million, said Bloomberg's sources, who declined to be identified because talks are private. Shikun & Binui Ltd., an Israeli real-estate company controlled by the Arison Group, is also weighing a bid, according to a source. The winner may be picked as early as this month if they can agree on price, two sources told Bloomberg.

“Engineering companies such as Siemens, ABB, GE or Alstom will in the long term need to compensate for declining orders in their conventional power generation businesses, making renewable energy strategically very interesting for them,” said Stephan Wulf, who analyzes renewable energy companies at Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie. in Frankfurt.

Solel develops and builds solar thermal power plants and makes solar receivers, a main component for the facilities that collect sunlight with mirrors to generate steam that powers turbines. Solel, which employs about 400 people, has solar fields in California and is supplying new plants in Spain.

Following a $150mm investment in 2008, Ecofin Ltd., a London-based investment company specialized in utilities and infrastructure, owns 63 percent of Solel’s issued share capital.

Solel reported sales of $37.7 million in 2008, on a net loss of $16.9 million, according to the Ecofin filing.

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Siemens invests $15mm in Israeli solar company Arava Power

Siemens, the German industrial giant, recently announced a $15 million investment in Arava Power Company, a company developing solar power plants in Israel.

An agreement was signed at Kibbutz Ketura in August, securing Siemens a 40 percent stake in the company. Arava Power develops, builds and operates photovoltaic plants in Israel. “This investment is another consequential step in further strengthening our green and sustainable technologies,” said Peter Löscher, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “Thanks to its intensive sunshine and steadily growing demand for energy, Israel is an ideal location for further developing our solar business.” The equity investment will make it possible to build Israel’s first commercial solar farms – to be located in the region between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea.

The investment is aimed at constructing the solar fields with a significant proportion of Siemens know-how, delivering technology, e.g. inverter and transformers, ensuring new projects for the group. As Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contractor, Siemens will handle project management including engineering and construction of the photovoltaic plants. Overall, Siemens has concluded a framework agreement to build solar plants with a total output of 40 megawatts (MW). The first project will be the construction of a plant with an output of up to 4.9 MW at Kibbutz Ketura, in the southern desert of Israel. Additional photovoltaic plants are already being planned for the Negev and Arava deserts and Israel’s aim is to meet around ten percent of its total energy needs with renewable energy plants by 2020.

Arava Power, the Israeli development company, was founded in 2006 and is headquartered at Kibbutz Ketura, north of Eilat. The company, with some 20 employees, is a subsidiary of Global Sun Power Ltd. Siemens is investing in Arava Power through its equity investment company Siemens Project Ventures GmbH (SPV).

“This is the most comprehensive foreign investment to date for an Israeli solar energy firm,” said Johannes Schmidt, CEO of the Equity & Project Finance unit of Siemens Financial Services. “Through its early and extensive engagement in the field, Arava Power has developed into Israel’s leading solar energy company. Siemens will be supporting local solar projects with our full range of technologies, know-how and finance.”

Jonathan Cohen, CEO of Arava Power, added: “Siemens is the ideal partner for Arava Power and our property partners for winning over others interested in producing solar energy in Israel. Our strategic partnership will make it possible for our country to reach its ambitious goals of clean air and renewable energy even faster.”

Founded by a group of visionaries at Kibbutz Ketura, Arava Power Company seeks to supply 10% of Israel’s electricity needs with the development of solar energy plants with Kibbutzim, Moshavim and other land owners, especially in the south of Israel.

Yosef Abramowitz, Arava Power Company's Co-Founder and President, was recently profiled in Ha'aretz.

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FRX Polymers raises $6MM from Israel Cleantech Ventures and Capricorn Venture Partners to develop green plastics

Israel Cleantech Ventures (ICV) and Capricorn Venture Partners (CVP) announced today that they have invested $6MM in FRX Polymers, Inc., (FRX) the manufacturer of a new, environmentally friendly family of inherently flame retardant plastics. FRX’s products are finding markets as polymeric flame retardant additives and as “stand-alone” inherently flame retardant engineering plastics.

FRX Polymers is currently in the commercialization stage for its family of polyphosphonate homopolymers and copolymers. According to the company, these plastics are tough, transparent, possess high melt flow, and are inherently flame retardant. FRX polymers are environmentally friendly since they do not contain halogens, whereas many other flame retardant additives do contain halogen.

FRX was the 2008 recipient of Frost and Sullivan’s “Innovation of the Year” award for flame retardant materials and received the first-place award in the Clean Technology Business Forum, a competition sponsored by Battelle at the recent Global Plastics Environmental Conference in Orlando, FL. FRX has over 20 partnership agreements in place with some of the largest plastics manufacturers in the world.

“FRX represents an extremely compelling investment opportunity for us,” stated Jack Levy, Partner at Israel Cleantech Ventures. “There is a clear global market demand for the company’s green flame retardant plastics and we believe that FRX’s products will play an important role in redefining a significant part of the $15B Flame Retardant Plastics industry.”

Claude Stoufs, Senior Investment Manager for Capricorn Venture Partners said, “FRX Polymers has developed a novel and very exciting product line to address the global need for non-halogen containing flame retardant plastics. As a consequence of the many excellent partnerships that FRX has established, we believe that the company is poised for accelerated growth.”

“We are delighted to welcome both ICV and Capricorn to our board and current group of committed shareholders” declared Marc Lebel, President and CEO of FRX Polymers. “Both venture partners bring considerable business experience to our company. In addition, they have considerable access to global markets, which will serve us well as we embark on the next phase of our growth plan.”

FRX Polymers was launched in 2007 as a limited partnership 50% owned by KPP Investments, an investment company with headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 50% owned by Triton Systems, Inc., technology incubator based in Chelmsford, MA, that specializes in advanced materials.

Amir Ohad of KPP Investments, the former CEO of Kafrit Industries, Ltd., an Israeli plastics company, sits on FRX's Board of Directors. Ross Haghighat, the founder and CEO of Triton Systems, and also a Director of FRX, was profiled in an article on SiliconIran.

Triton Systems has a track record of partnering with Israeli investors: in 2001, it spun-off three portfolio companies with financing from the Millennium Materials Fund, a Tel Aviv-based specialty materials venture fund that invests in materials technology companies worldwide.

FRX is headquartered in Chelmsford, MA, where it operates both polymer and monomer pilot facilities. FRX is also currently building a semi-works plant in Switzerland in partnership with Uhde Inventa-Fischer.

Established in 2006, Israel Cleantech Ventures has $75MM under management and to date has completed eleven investments across diverse cleantech sectors, including water, solar, biogas, energy storage, energy efficiency, transportation and green materials.

Capricorn Venture Partners is a pan-European manager of venture capital funds seeking to invest in technology-based growth companies. The Capricorn Cleantech Fund invests in European growth companies developing innovative breakthrough technologies in the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency, water purification and re-use, bio-based material conversion and bio-refinery platforms, clean air, climate change, green chemistry and advanced materials, materials recovery and recycling.

BrightView Systems and EPFL announce thin-film solar collaboration

BrightView Systems, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based start-up developing production process optimization tools for the solar industry, and the Thin-Film Photovoltaics Laboratory at IMT, a world leading lab in silicon-based thin-film solar cells research, part of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), are joining forces to introduce novel solutions for the optimization of next generation thin-film solar cells production.

According to a joint press release, BrightView's advanced solutions will be utilized to provide real-time feedback to encompass a complete framework for process optimization that is scalable from pilot line to mass production of large area panels.

In January 2009 BrightView finalized a $6 million Series A financing by Israel Cleantech Ventures and Hasso Plattner Ventures.

"We are convinced that the strategy of BrightView, their ideas, dynamism, specific know-how and unique approach to key issues in manufacturing, will allow us to achieve our goals", said Prof. Christophe Ballif, head of the PV Laboratory.

By targeting key manufacturing challenges related to optimization and effective control of optical and electrical cell properties, BrightView and IMT aim at improving the efficiency and reliability of solar cells, while enabling high productivity at volume production.

"Working closely with IMT enables us to fine-tune our solutions for process optimization to the most advanced cell structures ahead of their incorporation in the production lines", said Benny Shoham, CEO of BrightView. "The excellent team at IMT is one of the true forces that brings device novelty to this industry and drives it to continuously improve efficiency, while our solutions are designed to address key challenges in mass producing these advanced structures. Together we will enable a faster adoption of new more efficient cell technologies at lower manufacturing cost" added Shoham.

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Phoebus Energy unveils hybrid water heating system in Jerusalem

Phoebus Energy unveiled its hybrid water heating system last week at the community center in Gilo, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, according to an article in The Jerusalem Post.

Phoebus Energy, founded in 2007 with $2 million in seed funding from Terra Venture Partners, has developed a hybrid heat pump system that integrates with existing oil-based systems to make them more efficient. Newly appointed CEO Yaron Tal told The Jerusalem Post says that Phoebus Energy's system saves between 50 and 70 percent of oil and reduces pollution by 80 to 90% compared to a traditional heat pump system.

"The Phoebus system is based on a complex algorithm that we developed which governs when to use the oil-based system and when to use the heat pump. It constantly monitors many parameters to decide which way is most efficient to generate heat," Tal said.

"The system measures such parameters as the temperature outside, the temperature of the water, and the price of the oil. Several of the parameters change a number of times throughout the day," he continued.

Phoebus Energy has already installed its system in eight locations in Israel, from kibbutzim to community centers to hotels, according to The Jerusalem Post. Phoebus Energy's solution targets medium and large water heating systems, such as those found in hospitals, hotels, factories and large apartment buildings. The company is also already in negotiations with potential clients abroad, Tal told the Post.

Heat pumps had been around for a long time as a means to heat water, Tal said. Phoebus Energy heat pumps take an ecologically safe version of freon to transfer energy to water. The freon flows at high pressure at a temperature of 5º Celsius. Air is then pushed into the freon, which heats the freon. At 12º, the freon turns from a liquid into a gas. The gas is then mixed with the water, which heats the water, Tal said. The company managed to get the pumps to heat water to 55-60º Celsius, as opposed to other models that only reached 30-40º, he said.

The use of heat pumps cut oil use tremendously, thus reducing costs and pollution, he said.

Shalom Turgeman, who runs the Gilo community center, said in a statement, "The expected savings run into the hundreds of thousands of shekels, but the real point is that we are taking a step for a greener Earth and fighting the air pollution in the Gilo neighborhood."

Until now, the community center, one of the largest in the country, burned more than 100,000 liters of oil per year to heat the swimming pool, water for the showers and bathrooms, and the gym.

Yaron Tal, previously the President & CEO of TopSpin Medical, was appointed CEO of Phoebus Energy earlier this month. Yoav Ben Yaacov, the Founder and former CEO of Phoebus Energy, is now the company's VP Marketing & Sales.

It was reported last month that Phoebus Energy recently completed a financing round of $1 million from Galilaea Fund.

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