The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies In Energy
The world has a challenge on its
hands: As people rise out of poverty, their energy consumption rises, too,
putting pressure on everyone around the globe to offer game-changing solutions
to the greenhouse-gas crisis. These folks are meeting the task.
For obliterating the major barrier
to wider adoption of electric vehicles.
Sure, Tesla has carved out an undisputed lead in the electric-car industry with
its revolutionary Model S, but the unveiling of the company’s charging stations
was equally noteworthy and less heralded. Billed as “the fastest charging
station on the planet”--because it is--the Tesla Supercharger can fuel up a
Model S in as little as 40 minutes, removing the so-called range anxiety that
has been the biggest bugaboo of EV doubters. But in January, Tesla took another
leap: It expanded its rapid-charging station route to more than 70 locations,
letting Model S owners drive coast-to-coast for the first time.
For harnessing the Industrial
Internet to build the world’s first intelligent turbine. The huge multinational corporation continues its work in a
variety of energy domains, but one of its new wind turbines, known as the
“2.5-120,” is of special significance. A new design harnesses the Industrial
Internet--GE’s network of sensors and analytics that can significantly optimize
machines--and can generate large amounts of power in low winds, a gargantuan
leap forward. The turbine also incorporates battery storage systems to account
for wind power’s intermittency, resulting in efficiency gains of about 25%.
This is, one could argue, the world’s first “truly intelligent” wind turbine.
For wooing vehicle-fleet owners to
adopt its emissions-reducing tech. XL
Hybrids, a Boston-based startup spun out from one of MIT’s petri dishes,
retrofits fuel-thirsty vans and trucks with a more-efficient hybrid
diesel-electric technology. It’s a novel and hugely important strategy in
reducing emissions. It’s also a steadily growing business, as fleet owners that
may be unswayed by environmental arguments opt for the XL retrofits to save on
fuel costs. The company is currently working with FedEx and a host of local
companies.
For upending lighting with its smart
LED bulbs. Philips’s LEDs, similar in many respects to silicon chips, use about
one-sixth the electricity of a conventional bulb, saving not only on
electricity but vastly reducing carbon emissions in the process. Its Hue system
for controlling its LED lights through iPhones and remote applications debuted
with great fanfare. But the LED bulbs themselves--which will help bring in
nearly $2 billion in sales for the company by next year--remain the benchmark
for efficiency, quality, and design.
Unrestrained by politics, the U.S.
Marine Corps is a quiet player on the front lines of clean-energy innovation.
Over the past few years, the Expeditionary Energy Office, or E2O, has tested
radical battlefield energy systems with the aim of curtailing dependence on
fossil fuels during missions. The result: dozens of hybrid innovations that
have shown the potential to cut diesel use in half on the battlefield,
and--hopefully--as a bonus, sustain longer missions and reduce soldiers'
vulnerabilities. Here are three of the most useful:
- A) MAPS (Marine austere patrolling system) With these souped-up backpacks, which contain a flexible solar panel, Marines can now power their gear, and filter water, without multiple batteries, reducing the average infantryman’s pack weight by nearly 50 pounds.
- B) SPACES (Solar portable alternative communications) On a weeklong extended patrol, Marines would rather carry ammunition than heavy power systems. For satellite and Internet communications on the go, they unroll SPACES, a mat made of photovoltaics that harnesses solar power.
- C) Hybrid power for MTVRs Medium tactical vehicle replacements are among the most-used combat trucks, but they’re also dieselguzzling monsters that spend up to 70% of their time idling in order to power electronics. This year, E2O will roll out small, two- to threecylinder generators that allow frontline MTVRs to shut off engines without pulling the plug on computers.
For redesigning the notion of the
solar home with dead-simple shingle arrays.
Speeding up the adoption of solar power is not just a challenge of bringing
down costs by increasing efficiencies; it’s also a matter of design. How do we
integrate energy production into our homes with ease, and with tolerable
aesthetics? Dow’s Powerhouse Solar Shingles, which can slash energy bills by up
to 60%, are a crucial step in solving this problem: Rather than install bulky
photovoltaic superstructures, customers have an electrician attach the Solar
Shingles to their roof in the place of conventional shingles. Demand is clearly
increasing among consumers--Dow has continued rolling out the award-winning
systems across U.S. markets, most recently in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and
Virginia.
For discovering a more-efficient way
to remove salt from water. As pure
water becomes more and more scarce in a warming world, desalination technology
has become increasingly important. But water desalination is extremely energy
intensive, with desal plants often using an electricity-sucking reverse-osmosis
process that forces salty water at very high pressure through fine mesh
filters. Okeanos employs a radical new technology, using a kind of electronic
chip that taps microscopic electrical fields to take the salt out of the water.
Though a fairly early-stage company, Okeanos has made a huge splash in the scientific
community and promises to offer radical new methods for desalination.
For applying the pay-as-you-go model
to scale up solar in developing countries. The
U.K.-based startup Azuri offers a pay-as-you-go deal that uses cell-phone
financing as its model and thus circumvents the high up-front costs of solar
installation. Customers in developing countries in Africa pay $10 for solar
panel installation on their roofs (or nearby) and then pay about $1.50 a week
for service. This provides enough electricity to light their homes and charge
their phones, and after 18 months, they’ve paid off the cost of the solar
panel. Thanks to an investment from Barclays, Azuri is scaling up quickly and hopes
to deploy its offering to a quarter-million homes by the end of this year.
For tinkering with plant genomes to
make feedstocks more easily convertible to biofuels. One of the perennial challenges facing the biofuels industry
is how to transform feedstocks (i.e., plants and organic matter) into fuel in a
simple and cost-effective manner. You can change the fermentation processes or
try to improve it with better catalysts. But what if you change the plant
genome itself? That’s been Ceres’s recent strategy: They are trying to reduce
the lignin in plant material so that its feedstocks are more easily--and more
cheaply--converted to biofuels. It’s a new and innovative strategy that
promises to be transformative.
For applying the crowdfunding model
to solar energy installations. Mosaic
is an online solar marketplace that connects investors--anyone who wants to
invest at least $25--with solar projects. Since launching in 2012, Mosaic has
crowdfunded more than $5.6 million in investments for all sorts of worthy solar
projects (on top of university housing, convention centers, affordable housing
complexes, etc.). It’s a win-win: Investors make money from loan interest,
while residents and municipalities get to reduce their energy bills.
By Fast Company Staff http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2014/industry/energy?partner
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