1. Using Power Factor Devices and Similar Gadgets

Many people believe that power factor devices can bring down their electrical consumption. However, these things do not really help that much because modern appliances already have built-in power correctors. Plus, according to Consumer Reports, most households in the US already have a power factor of 90 percent. So, these types of devices can really be considered scams.

2. Turning Off Appliances

Turning off appliances is one of the most popular energy-saving schemes that do not really work. Appliances that are not unplugged or are simply on standby mode can still use up electricity. To ensure that you are saving 100 percent of the energy, remember to unplug all electrical devices that are not in use.

3. Putting Computers on Sleep Mode for Long Hours

As computers become a big part of everyone’s life, many people are led to believe that leaving the computer in sleep mode when not in use can help save energy. Well, if you are just going to leave your computer for a brief moment, then using sleep mode is perfectly fine. However, if you are not going to use your computer for several hours, it would be better to turn it off completely for maximum energy-saving benefits.

(via: finweb.com)

So, what is a Convertible Note?

For an early stage company seeking to raise money, there are two main routes. One is to issue equity (a share in the company) to an investor in exchange for a cash investment. When a start-up enterprise raise capital from an investor, it will typically be determined through long negotiations, how much the company is worth at this point. This is really risky for both sides, because the entrepreneur usually needs 2-3 years to proof the real value of the idea.  In this case, when the initial company value was set wrong, the founder has given up too much shares for the investor. In other hand, the investor’s risk is too high in this early stage, because at least 90% of start-ups goes bankrupt within 5 years. Investors try to compensate this risk with increased equity.

Startup financing cycle

Another way is to borrow the money, with the intention that the loan eventually converts into equity. This is the essence of what is called a “Convertible Note”. A Convertible Note is a debt that the company incurs, that can be converted into stock based on certain conditions. A Convertible Note is commonly used for a small first angel round ($100k‐$500k) to provide financing on terms that will be decided at a later date when additional, often professional investors participate. Thus it’s often called a Bridge Financing.

A Convertible Note is also known as a debt offering since the company literally goes into debt to the investors until the price of the Note is paid back, plus interest, or until it is converted into stock.

Pros and cons for an entrepreneur

You want to raise capital to grow your business and you need to be efficient from a time perspective and keep legal costs to a minimum. There is a great deal of work, which costs time and money, to create a stock offering. If you are only looking for a relatively small amount of funding, for example, under $500k, then a Convertible Note is much simpler. For example, the legal fees for a Convertible Note might be in the range of $2,000‐$5,000, while the fees for a Series A could be $5k‐$50k, as you might also pay for the fees of the investors.

In addition to being quick and relatively straightforward to execute, these funds will allow you to make progress and improve your valuation for your subsequent financing.
Another benefit for the company borrowing the money is that you might get the cost of the Convertible Note at a lower interest rate, since the lender/investor has the option of converting it into stock.
The company must record the Convertible Note as a debt in its balance sheet. If bankruptcy occurs, the Note holders are considered creditors and must be paid back by the company’s remaining assets.

Pros and cons for an investor

The investor wants to invest in the Company today and believes a subsequent financing is around the corner. The investor is seeking to benefit from the same terms (e.g. Liquidation Preference) as the next investors, who also might be better equipped to price the round. The investor seeks to be compensated for the risk of investing early through terms in the Note.

Investors sometimes object to convertible debt financing because they don’t know how long it will take for the next financing to occur, and the company’s value could increase much more than the discount their Note provides them. This leaves them having taken a much larger risk than the next‐stage investors, and enabled the company to significantly increase its value, yet they pay a price close to that of the next‐stage investors. One way to mitigate this concern is to cap the valuation that will be used to calculate the share price for the Note conversion.

In general, if there are sufficient protections in the terms of the note, then angel investors will be willing to work with this method of investment. It is a way of getting cash to a company quickly so it can grow sufficiently to make it to the next round of equity investment. Once that first round is done, the investors’ loans convert, and then they are holding equity.

Reference: startupcompanylawyer.com

Board Support Structure

In the kernel source tree, each architecture has its own directory, for example arch/arm for the ARM architecture. This directory contains generic ARM code: boot, common, configs, kernel, lib, mm, nwfpe, vfp, oprofile, tools. Additionally it contains many mach-* directories for different CPU families: mach-at91 for Atmel AT91 family, mach-pxa for PXA CPUs, mach-imx for Freescale iMX CPUs, etc. Each of these directories contain support for the given CPU and support for several boards using this CPU family.

Note: Some CPU types share some code in an entity called a “platform”. For example plat-omap contains common code from mach-omap1 and mach-omap2.

Porting to the SmartMeter DL board

From now on I’m going to take the example of the SmartMeter DL board, which uses an AT91SAM9XE256 CPU, which is an AT91SAM9260 with flash memory. At arch/arm/mach-at91 one can find:

Kconfig

A configuration option must be defined for the board, in arch/arm/machat91/Kconfig:

config MACH_SMARTMETER_DL
	bool "SmartMeter DL custom board"
	depends on ARCH_AT91SAM9260_SAM9XE
	help
	  Select this if you are using Szabolcs Erki's SmartMeter DL custom board based on the Atmel AT91SAM9XE.

This option must depend on the CPU type option corresponding to the CPU used in the board. In this case it depens on ARCH_AT91SAM9260_AT91SAM9XE, defined in the same file.

Defconfig

A default configuration file for the board can optionally be stored in arch/arm/configs/. For my board it is smartmeter_dl_defconfig.

Makefile

The source files corresponding to the board support must be associated with the configuration option of the board:

obj$(CONFIG_MACH_SMARTMETER_DL) += board-smartmeter-dl.o

Board Support

This is usually one c file (the naming convention is board-xxx.c) but contains the most important parts of the source code of a supported board. I will go trough the file and describe each part, but it could be a good method to look into an example file in the kernel tree.

Each board is defined by a machine structure at the end of arch/arm/machat91/board-*.c files. For the SmartMeter board, it looks like this:

MACHINE_START(SMARTMETER_DL, "SMARTMETER DL")
/* Maintainer: Szabolcs Erki
*/
.phys_io = AT91_BASE_SYS,
.io_pg_offst = (AT91_VA_BASE_SYS >> 18) & 0xfffc,
.boot_params = AT91_SDRAM_BASE + 0x100,
.timer = &at91sam926x_timer,
.map_io = ek_map_io,
.init_irq = ek_init_irq,
.init_machine = ek_board_init,
MACHINE_END

MACHINE_START and MACHINE_END macros are defined in arch/arm/include/asm/mach/arch.h. They are helpers to define a struct machine_desc structure stored in a specific ELF section. Several machine_desc structures can be defined in a kernel, which means that the kernel can support several boards. The right structure is chosen at boot time.

In the ARM architecture, each board type is identified by a machine type number. The latest machine type numbers list can be found at http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/machines/download.php. A copy of it exists in the kernel tree in arch/arm/tools/mach-types. For the SmartMeter board:

smartmeter_dl		MACH_SMARTMETER_DL	SMARTMETER_DL		2599

At compile time, this file is processed to generate a header file: include/asm-arm/mach-types.h.
For the SmartMeter board:

#define MACH_TYPE_SMARTMETER_DL 2599

And a few other macros in the same file.
The machine type number is set in the MACHINE_START() definition:

MACHINE_START(SMARTMETER_DL, "SMARTMETER DL")

At run time, the machine type number of the board on which the kernel is running is passed by the bootloader in register r1. Very early in the boot process (arch/arm/kernel/head.S), the kernel calls _lookup_machine_type in arch/arm/kernel/head-common.S.__lookup_machine_type looks at all the machine_desc structures of the special ELF section. If it doesn’t find the requested number, prints a message and stops. If found, it knows the machine descriptions and continues the boot process.

The timer field point to a struct sys_timer structure, that describes the system timer. Used to generate the periodic tick at HZ frequency to call the scheduler periodically. On the SmartMeter board, the system timer is defined by the at91sam926x_timer structure in at91sam926x_time.c. It contains the interrupt handler called at HZ frequency. It is integrated with the clockevents and the clocksource infrastructures. See include/linux/clocksource.h and include/linux/clockchips.h for details.

The map_io() function points to ek_map_io(), which initializes the CPU using at91sam9260_initialize(), configures the debug serial port and set the console to be on this serial port and is called at the very beginning of the C code execution.

The init_irq() initializes the IRQ hardware specific details. It is implemented by ek_init_irq(), which calls at91sam9260_init_interrupts() in at91sam9260.c, which mainly calls at91_aic_init() in irq.c. It initializes the interrupt controller, assign the priorities and register the IRQ chip (irq_chip structure) to the kernel generic IRQ infrastructure, so that the kernel knows how to ack, mask, unmask the IRQs.

The init_machine() function completes the initialization of the board by registering all platform devices. Called by customize_machines() in arch/arm/kernel/setup.c. This function is an arch_initcall (list of functions whose address is stored in a specific ELF section, by levels). It is called at the end of kernel initialization, just before running the first userspace program. For the SmartMeter board, it is implemented in the ek_board_init() function. It registers USB host, USB device, SSC, NAND flash, SD/MMC card, buttons and LEDs. It uses at91_add_device_*() helpers, defined in at91sam9260_devices.c. These helpers call platform_device_register() to register the different platform_device structures defined in the same file. For some devices, the board specific code does the registration itself (buttons) or passes board-specific data to the registration helper (USB host and device, NAND, Ethernet, etc.).

In the next post of the series I’m going to talk about the driver development tasks.

References:
http://freeelectrons.com/docs

In May 2008, the Jackson, Miss.-company garnered $20 million in a funding round led by Credit Suisse to develop its communications devices and software for smart meters.

What has emerged is the GridRouter, an Internet Protocol-based universal router with an open platform that can communicate with public and private networks whether they be using WiMax, municipal Wi-Fi, or a proprietary network system.

SmartSynch's upgradable GridRouter is built to allow utilities to add multiple communications technologies from difference companies and make them all interoperable.

The GridRouter device could become a darling of utilities by enabling them to connect existing proprietary networks to the GridRouter without having to upgrade their entire system, and using existing off-the-self IT management tools to do it.

The company’s public relations team has been telling the press that “SmartSynch sees this product doing for the smart grid what Cisco did for the Internet.”

While such grid and appliance interoperability claims might only catch the eye of industry wonks, average consumers should also perk up their ears and listen. Progress on that front could mean the difference between paying a premium for a smart-grid-enabled appliance, or having it come standard on most mass-produced appliances within the next half-dozen years.

Currently, companies and organizations are jockeying to back what they hope will be the standard of choice for smart-grid interaction when it comes to software and communications tools. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced in November, for instance, that it has a smart-grid task force reviewing how its standards might be modified to become the best choice for smart grids. Google’s PowerMeter, while using its existing Web-based portal to provide a platform for smart-grid home data, has partnered with AlertMe, which uses ZigBee instead of Wi-Fi for home devices to communicate with a central hub and smart meter.

Appliance manufacturers like GE and Whirlpool have publicly expressed enthusiasm about incorporating smart technology into their products.

GE announced in July that it’s testing Tendril as possible smart appliance software and started several pilot projects in places like Masdar City and Hawaii.

But there has also been some hesitation. Whirlpool said it would like to phase out all “dumb” appliances by 2015, but won’t do so until a clear standard communications winner emerges.

Who could blame them? No one wants to be the one left with noncompliant technology once clear winners begin to emerge. But because of this, standardization squabbles could become a hold-up in the smart-grid evolution.

If SmartSynch’s GridRouter can provide an easy an out-of-the-box solution to syncing everyone up, as the company claims, it could be the grease needed to quicken the smart-grid build-out.

(via:Cnet.com)

Sleek, energy-saving power management system with integrated iGo Green™ Technology automatically reduces wasted standby power. Plug in your computer and other devices to save power without the hassle of unplugging your devices.

The Power Smart Tower has four of these Green outlets, four normal outlets (in case you have stuff that needs to draw power all the time) and two USB jacks, and will run $80. Its little brother, the Power Smart Wall, is meant to be wall-mounted, and has half the number of outlets and no USB jacks. It’ll retail for $30 (this one is pretty tempting to me personally—seems fairly priced and a nice easy way to save some power). Finally, the diminutive laptop charger, helpfully named Laptop Charger, only charges your computer when it actually needs it, and offers an additional plug for a mobile device. That one’ll run you $100. All three products are available now from iGo’s site.

Charge plugged and unplugged - during use as a wall charger, the internal battery recharges and is ready to provide power when away from outlets.

(via:Gizmodo)

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) on Monday released a white paper (click for PDF) outlining what it called the requirements for smart grid acceptance. The release of the paper was timed for the same week that international climate negotiations are going on in Copenhagen.

Smart grid technology, including so-called smart appliances, have the ability to help consumers cut their electricity use and shave their utility bills – but only if three pieces fall into place, according to AHAM. Those include time-of-use electricity rates, open communications standards, and products that let consumers retain full control of their home appliances.

GE already makes smart meters with two-way communications between the consumer and the utility.

Utilities around the world are installing two-way meters that can send information back and forth between customers and utilities. That data can be used in a number of ways, including real-time energy monitoring and dialing down electricity use at peak times.

But already there are complaints surfacing that consumers aren’t getting the benefits of those more capable and more expensive smart meters.

AHAM says that time-of-use pricing is required to motivate consumers to run energy-intensive tasks, such as running a load of laundry or the dishwasher, at off-peak times. “It must be recognized that existing residential tariffs and rate structures do not provide sufficient economic incentive to spur maximum consumer participation in the use of smart grid technologies,” the industry association said in its paper.

The reasoning behind time-of-use electricity pricing is to reflect cost of power to utilities, which varies depending on the time and demand.

GE, Whirlpool, and other appliance makers plan to make appliances that can receive signals from a smart meter on changing electricity prices. On a hot summer day when air conditioners are maxing out the grid’s capacity, a dishwasher, for example, could go into energy-saving mode and take longer to finish its job. GE on Monday said it will introduce a line of “smart-grid enabled” washers and dryers in 2012.

However, many states charge for electricity at the same rate at all times, so consumers have little financial incentive to run loads at off-peak times or purchase appliances that can respond to demand response signals from smart meters.

In addition, AHAM calls for a “rapid drive towards open standards” for in-home communications. The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is overseeing an effort to codify a number of smart-grid related standards.

But in the area of home networks, disputes among appliance companies is slowing down the process, according to George Arnold, the national coordinator for smart-grid interoperability at NIST.

Finally, AHAM said that privacy and security need to be assured for consumer acceptance. “Projects should emphasize the consumer as the decision maker as opposed to scenarios where the utility possesses absolute control over the consumer’s appliances and devices,” it said.

Studies have shown (click for PDF) that access to detailed information, rather than only getting a monthly bill, can reduce energy use by 15 percent in a home.

Opower is focused on home energy efficiency. It collects and analyzes utility customers' bills and provides customized reports and recommendations on how to shave consumption. Company executives believe that more attention should be paid to people than devices.

When aggregated at large scale, these savings would be significant. If all households in the developed countries achieved a 15 percent energy savings by 2020, it would be the equivalent of taking 200 million cars of the road in the European Union and shutting down 124 coal power plants, according to the coalition.

“By empowering citizens with information and tools for managing energy, governments and businesses around the world can harness the power of hundreds of millions of people to fight climate change–and save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in the process,” the group statement said.

The call to action was signed by Google, General Electric, Intel, Dow, Whirlpool, venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers along with a number of non-governmental organizations, including the National Resource Defense Council, The Climate Group, the Alliance to Save Energy, The Energy Future, and the Center for American Progress.

There are already a handful of home energy monitoring displays available. But millions more will be installed in the coming years as part of utility-run smart-grid programs, although not all home energy displays need a smart meter to function. More sophisticated products will provide information on a small display, the Web, or a TV, and give consumers recommendations on how to program appliances and lighting for efficiency.

Although real-time energy information is helpful, time-of-use electricity prices are also needed to give consumers financial incentive to use energy-hungry appliances, such as dishwashers, at off-peak times.
The coalition at Copenhagen said that national governments should ensure consumer have access to real-time or near real-time energy use data; pricing; and the carbon intensity of electricity sources.

Google last year introduced PowerMeter, a Web-based application for tracking home energy use. The idea is that by viewing daily and historical data, people will find ways to curb energy use.

(via: Cnet.com)

According to Kappos, the processing time for green patents until “final disposition” is typically about 40 months, because of personnel shortage that “has created a backlog that is unacceptable.”

The “Green Tech Pilot Program” will allow inventors who have previously submitted patent applications to apply for “special accelerated status” for technologies that “materially contribute to enhancing environmental quality,” such as the discovery or development of renewable energy resources, energy efficiency utilization, or greenhouse gas reduction.

Top layer

The places for million parts…

Bottom layer

Check out the width of the wires on the high voltage side

The black finish makes it really hard to get the wires showing on a photo so I asked Anna to help me and play a bit with her professional studio flash to give you an idea of how it looks. I’m extremely happy with how they turned out.

I have the parts for two cards and am now the owner of the circuit boards too, so it’s time for the assembly.

A “megawatt-class” battery attached to American Electric Power’s grid in Charleston, W.V. It’s used as a buffer, able to generate a few hours of power for an overloaded substation.

There are essentially two markets when it comes to utility-grade energy storage. On one end are storage devices that can store several hours or even weeks of electricity. These “bulk storage” devices are designed to make power generation resources, particularly wind or solar power, available when it’s needed.

At the other end is the market for “grid stabilization,” which is like the short-term, random access memory that a PC uses.

Beacon Power makes a flywheel that is designed for grid stabilization. It delivers 1 megawatt of electricity but only for 15 minutes. That’s enough to maintain a steady frequency and to smooth out differences in grid demand and supply. The company says that a 1-megawatt device like this one will be deployed on the grid by the end of the year.

What if the same lithium-ion batteries that store a charge in your laptop or your hybrid car were deployed onto the grid? That’s what A123 Systems is doing with utilities right now, according to a company executive. Megawatt-size batteries, which would be assembled from smaller batteries like these, are being developed with General Electric, an investor in A123 Systems.

A completely different type of battery is called a flow battery, where big tanks like these discharge liquid to cause an electrochemical reaction.

VRB Power Systems has developed a vanadium-based flow battery that can store several hours of electricity. One of its installations, pictured here, is to back up wind turbines for four hours at peak times in King Island, Australia.

The system uses tanks filled with liquid electrolytes that flow over a bank of fuel cells to generate electricity. The design lasts longer than traditional lead-acid batteries, the company says.

A compressed air storage project now in the works is the Iowa Stored Energy Park. The facility will combine the power generation of several wind turbines and use underground storage to make wind power “dispatchable,” or available on demand.

When demand for electricity is lowest, in the middle of the night, the turbines will compress air and pump it underground in either salt domes or other geological spaces. During times of peak energy demand, such as the afternoon, the air can be released to help power a natural gas turbine generator, using half as much gas. The facility, which is projected to store several days’ worth of electricity, is set to be online in 2011.

Start-up General Compression is betting that a radically different wind turbine design can enhance compressed air energy storage. It is trying to raise money to build a turbine that would have an air compressor in the nacelle, the housing behind the turbine’s blades.

Once the air is compressed, it is pumped underground and then taken out to turn a device called an expander that makes electricity. Company executives say there are enough underground storage formations in the United States for several years of development. Interest is highest in the western part of the U.S., where the growth in demand is difficult for utilities to meet without building expensive power plants, which are opposed in many states.

(via: Cnet.com, captions by Martin LaMonica)

A “megawatt-class” battery attached to American Electric Power’s grid in Charleston, W.V. It’s used as a buffer, able to generate a few hours of power for an overloaded substation.

The money will come from the stimulus package and be matched by commercial companies, making the total spending $1.6 billion spread across 32 demonstration projects in 21 states. A total of $8.1 billion in smart-grid spending from public and private sources was announced late last month.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the awards at Ohio-based utility AEP, whose GridSmart program is considered one of the more technically advanced.

The bulk of the DOE awards–$435 million–will be aimed at adding communications to the transmission and distribution grid through the installation of two-way meters, sensors on the transmission lines, and in-home energy displays.

By networking devices along the grid and adding digital controls, utilities can more easily locate and fix outages and use their energy supply more efficiently. For consumers, in-home displays will allow them to get a real-time readout of their electricity usage to help ways to cut down consumption. Some utilities also offer programs where consumers can get cheaper rates to shave power use during peak times.

The rest of the DOE funding will go toward testing a range of energy storage technologies, including flow batteries, flywheels, and compressed air storage. With storage, utilities can more easily use solar and wind power by better managing the flow of energy on the grid.

(via: Cnet.com)

The need to hammer out interoperability standards is urgent and the task is extremely complex, said George Arnold, the national coordinator for smart-grid interoperability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who gave a presentation at a seminar organized by the IEEE here on Saturday. There will eventually be hundreds of standards covering many areas, from cybersecurity to how meters talk to plug-in cars.

“We’ve never tried to anything of this magnitude before,” Arnold said. “It’s more complicated than the Internet and Internet standards have been evolving for over 20 years.”

By contrast, smart-grid standards need to be agreed on quickly, with the next phase of a multiyear process due next to begin year. Technical interoperability through standards is supposed to safeguard various players, including consumers and utilities, against technical obsolescence and wasted investment. About $8.1 billion of federal, state, and industry money will be spent on upgrading the electricity grid in the next three years.

In the case of smart appliances, Arnold said he is ruffling feathers by pushing networking companies to sort out a dizzying number of options.

With two-way meters installed in people’s homes, a meter can send a message that higher electricity prices have gone into effect. For example, during a hot summer day when the air conditioning load on the grid is high, utilities may look to “shed load” and have some of its customers volunteer to lower their consumption.

An appliance, such as a dishwasher or clothes dryer, equipped with a chip should be able to receive the message from the meter and go into energy-saving mode. A “smart” appliance could receive the message and perhaps do a job in an hour instead of half an hour to use less power. That handshake between the appliance and meter needs to be standardized to make sure that consumers can buy products from different suppliers.

The problem is that there are multiple methods for passing energy-related information around the home and the companies involved are pushing their own technology, creating a “mess,” said Arnold. There are wireless protocols Zigbee and Wi-Fi and at least six powerline communication protocols that use a home’s wiring to move data.

“We’re trying to accelerate the normal process and gravitate to a few market solutions, which normally takes years,” he said after his talk. “Proponents of various communications standards all have a role but at the end of the day, there has to be some assurances for consumers.”

Whirlpool last month announced that it would make 1 million “smart energy” clothes dryers by the end of 2011. That commitment, however, was contingent on standards being cooked by the end of 2010 and changes to regulations to reward consumers, appliances makers, and utilities to shave peak-time electricity use.

General Electric’s appliance division, too, is making a complete line of demand response appliances.

But appliance manufacturers will be reluctant to support multiple protocols in their networking chips because that could raise the price of these grid-aware white goods.

Internet as a model

The situation with home-area networking is just one instance playing out among the dozens of technology providers, utilities, regulators, and standards bodies. Conflict over standards is common in the tech industry because betting on a failed standard can be costly. But the situation is more complex in the smart grid given the number of groups with a stake in the process.

NIST was given authority over smart-grid standards in 2007 and in September released a framework and roadmap for interoperability. (Click for PDF.) Arnold said that there has been strong industry support for the effort. But given that a number of smart-grid trials are already under way, NIST is focusing on accelerating the process, which will result in a testing and certification next year.

In some ways, NIST is looking at the Internet standards as a model for how the process should be operated. Last week, there was an event called Grid-Interop where a governing panel was created specifically to focus on interoperability.

“Over time this organization (called the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel) is going to become something like the Internet architecture board,” said Arnold. “It’s not being set up to develop standards. It’s really being set up to develop the overall architecture and select which standards should be used.”

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is on the governing board of the panel, he added.

In its framework document, NIST identified eight priority areas where there is a lack of standards, which includes networking communications, security, and plug-in vehicles. But it is relying heavily on existing standards, including international standards, wherever it can to expedite the process, Arnold said.

That means coordinating among several standards organizations because the smart grid touches so many pieces of hardware and software. For example, to standardize plug-in electric vehicles requires coordination among upwards of 10 different organizations to cover national electric safety codes and standards for car batteries, networking, energy storage, and smart meters.

One of the principles that NIST is pursuing is that standards-based products should be backward-compatible since standards will continue to evolve for many years, Arnold said. He added that communications protocols over time should be based on the Internet Protocol.

(via: Cnet.com)

There is a widespread myth that the most important part of building a great company is coming up with a great idea.  This myth is reflected in popular movies and books: someone invents the Post-it note or cocktail umbrellas and becomes an overnight millionaire.  It is also perpetuated by experienced business people who, for the most part, don’t believe it. Venture capitalists often talk about “the best way to pitch your idea” and “honing your elevator pitch.”  Most business schools have business plan contests which are essentially beauty pageants for startup ideas.  All of this reinforces the myth that the idea is primary.

The reality is ideas don’t matter that much.  First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes – often dramatically – over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant. For every decent idea there are very likely other people who’ve also thought of it, and, surprisingly often, are also actively pitching investors. At an early stage, ideas matter less for their own sake and more insofar as they reflect the creativity and thoughtfulness of the team.

What you should really be focused on when pitching your early stage startup is pitching yourself and your team.  When you do this, remember that a startup is primarily about building something.  Hence the most important aspect of your backgrounds is not the names of the schools you attended or companies you worked at – it’s what you’ve built.  This could mean coding a video game, creating a non-profit organization, designing a website, writing a book, bootstrapping a company – whatever.  The story you should tell is the story of someone who has been building stuff her whole life and now just needs some capital to take it to the next level.

Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are raising money for.  This is why so many VCs tell entrepreneurs to “come back when you have a demo.”  They aren’t wondering whether your product can be built – they are wondering whether you can build it.

The awards ceremony for one of the leading environmental start-up competitions took place at the Masonic Center in San Francisco following a day-long conference in which contestants and venture capitalists had a chance to mingle.

EcoFactor has developed software that works in conjunction with a two-way thermostat to better maintain stable desired temperatures in homes. The system relies on outside data like weather as well has the thermal habits of the home, and self-regulates based on those factors. The process helps heating and cooling home systems run 20-30 percent more efficiently, according to company statistics.

“Being named the Cleantech Open national winner really validates our solution and our business model, and proves that the market is looking for energy-efficiency solutions that don’t ask people to change their behavior or sacrifice comfort,” EcoFactor CEO and co-founder John Steinberg said in a statement.

Out of the 12 national finalists, there were also 2 chosen as runners-up: Micromidas, which developed a process for converting raw sewage into biodegradable plastic products and Alphabet Energy, a team from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with a system that produces electricity from waste heat.

	Clean Tech Open (CTO) website
	Clean Tech Open (CTO) finalists

(via: Cnet.com)

Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors.

Jobs and Woz

The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them.

The power of two

Two is the right number — avoid the three-body problem. Think Jobs and Wozniak, Allen and Gates, Ellison and Lane, Hewlett and Packard, Larry and Sergey, Yang and Filo, Omidyar and Skoll.

One founder companies can work, against the odds (hello, Mark Zuckerberg). So can three founder companies (hello, @biz, @ev, and @jack). In three founder companies, the politics can be tough — gang-up votes, jockeying for board seats, etc. — but it’s manageable. Four is an extremely unstable configuration and five is right out. When 4-5 founder companies work, it’s because two founders dominate.

Two founders works because unanimity is possible, there are no founder politics, interests can easily align, and founder stakes are high post-financing.

Someone you have history with

You wouldn’t marry someone you’d just met. Date first. Guess which pair of famous co-founders is in this photo:

Go through something difficult, like a Prisoner’s Dilemma or a Zero-Sum Game. If being ethical was lucrative, everyone would do it!

One builds, one sells

The best builders can prototype and perhaps even build the entire product, end-to-end. The best sellers can sell to customers, partners, investors, and employees.

The seller doesn’t have to be a “salesman” or “business guy”. He can be technical, but he must be able to wield the tools of influence. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren’t salesmen, but they are sellers.

Aligned motives required

If one founder wants to build a cool product, another one wants to make money, and yet another wants to be famous, it won’t work.

Pay close attention — true motivations are revealed, not declared.

Criteria: Intelligence, energy, and integrity

It’s not the kid you grew up next to. It’s not the person you like the most. It’s not the hacker most willing to work for free.

It’s someone of incredibly high intelligence, energy, and integrity. You’ll need all three yourself, and a shared history, to evaluate your co-founder.

Don’t settle

If it doesn’t feel right, keep looking. If you’re compromising, keep looking. A company’s DNA is set by the founders, and its culture is an extension of the founders’ personalities.

Pick “nice” guys

Avoid overly rational short-term thinkers. There are bounds to rationality. Partner with someone who is irrationally ethical, or a rational believer that nice guys finish first. Be especially careful with the “sales” guy here.

What you don’t know

Business founders who don’t code use bad proxies for picking technical co-founders (”10 years with Java!”). Technical founders who don’t sell also use bad proxies (”Harvard MBA!”). Learn enough of the other side to have an informed opinion. If you’re not seriously impressed, move on.

FAQs

What if the right guy already has his own startup? Convince him to work on yours part-time — he’ll drop his idea once yours gets traction.

Breakups are hard

If you’re going to fall out with your co-founder, do it early, recover the equity into the option pool to keep the company going, and recruit someone else great to fill the missing slot. Build in founder vesting (a.k.a. the “Pre-Nup”) to keep the breakup from getting messy. Building a great company without a partner is like raising kids without a…

Nearly everything I’ve written on this topic applies to dating and marriage. Coincidence?

Go forth and multiply.

This post is by Naval Ravikant. If you like it, check out his blog and Twitter.

(via:Venture Hacks)

Help, albeit slow, is on the way, according to members of consumer electronics companies, green-tech start-ups, and venture capital firms at the Alliance for Universal Power Supplies conference Friday.

Attendees charging ahead to create power supplies that cause fewer headaches and wasted energy found hope when Westinghouse announced that it will support standards from start-up Green Plug, whose Greentalk protocol enables devices and power sources to “talk” to each other.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Darwin Chang, chief technology officer of Westinghouse Digital Electronics, which makes digital photo frames, LCD monitors, and high-definition televisions. “I’m challenging the rest of the industry to step up. Instead of making proprietary batteries and proprietary adapters, let’s make something open.”

Chang said he foresees working with Green Plug to implement a draft version of an open power standard for picture frames, then scaling up to devices with more demanding energy needs.

Green Plug aims to make a multipurpose charging hub one-tenth the size of this 3-port device.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET)

And tech companies can save money by adopting a universal standard for power supplies, which fail more than other electronics components, prompting many product returns, he added. “If it’s externalized, you just buy another brick,” he added.

Green Plug also makes an AC adapter (video) that can charge three USB-connected devices. It’s meant to prevent accidentally “frying” gadgets, to eliminate standby power waste, and to spare users from toting multiple cables.

“With our technology, it plugs in and gives a digital handshake,” said Frank Paniagua, Green Plug founder and CEO. “It only gives juice if recognized.”

According to their “technology Backgrounder” description:

Green Plug is dedicated to the global proliferation of efficient power charging systems that use standardized power supplies, cables and connectors.

Green Plug is partnering with other electronics manufacturers as well as a large chipmaker, he added.

However, even if chipmakers get on board, sweeping industry change would require cooperation with the makers of appliances and gadgets, said Jeffrey Tingley, Broadcom’s vice president of broadband and digital video engineering. Cooperation with Westinghouse is the first step, said Tingley, who is on Green Plug’s advisory board.

Green Plug’s Paniagua envisions chain hotels and coffee shops keeping universal chargers on site to attract and retain customers. He said he learned from informal talks with Hilton Hotels that the chain spends millions of dollars each year mailing hundreds of chargers every day to guests who leave them behind.

Building adapters into electrical outlets instead of a hodgepodge of cables and bricks was another approach mulled at the conference.

“If you can embed a power supply in a wall or in the furniture, then the consumer doesn’t have to think about it,” said Code Cubitt, an investment manager at Motorola Ventures.

Furniture makers, too, are considering better ways of integrating power supplies, according to Joel Mark Zwier, an advanced product development manager at Steelcase. It received Cradle to Cradle certification in part for substituting toxic vinyl for nylon within the wiring of workstations it makes.

Making power controls smarter and smaller helps to reduce wasted materials and energy, said Mark Muegge, director of product development at iWatt, which displayed its digital AC/DC power controls for LED lightbulbs.

Power supplies are a forgotten source of the world’s growing piles of electronics waste, which a common standard could help to reduce, said John Katz, pollution prevention coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest region.

In 2008, more than 3 billion power supplies will ship globally, he noted. And as each cell phone or MP3 charger lasts about a year and a half, some 2 billion power supplies are discarded annually around the world. In the United States alone, 379 million units wind up in landfills, amounting to one sixtieth of the plastic waste stream, Katz said.

China is the first country to pass a law demanding that all cell phones plug into a standard USB charger. No federal laws in the United States aim to reduce the proliferation, energy use, or disposal of electronics chargers.

Recycling the equipment is increasingly important not only to prevent pollution but to recover expensive materials, Katz added. “The idea that we’re throwing away hundreds of millions of pounds of copper wire is a huge issue,” he said.

John Trosko, a professional personal organization consultant in Los Angeles, said his clients stash useless cables in drawers indefinitely because they feel guilty about the potentially toxic trash and aren’t sure how to recycle it.

(via: Cnet.com)

Rozetkus 3D in full force

Rozetkus 3D ambushing

Rozetkus 3D in a room environment

(Via: Engadget, Art Lebedev)

]]> http://szabolcserki.com/index.php/2009/11/rozetkus-3d-power-socket-from-art-lebedev-studio/feed/ 6778 http://szabolcserki.com/index.php/2009/11/talkingplug-networked-smart-plug-to-control-appliance-energy-usage/ http://szabolcserki.com/index.php/2009/11/talkingplug-networked-smart-plug-to-control-appliance-energy-usage/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:05:29 +0000 Szabolcs Erki http://szabolcserki.com/?p=584 What if you could better control home appliance energy use by making your wall socket more clever?

That’s the idea behind TalkingPlug from Toronto-based Zerofootprint, a company which makes software for measuring and monitoring corporate carbon emissions.

TalkingPlug is a plug that fits on top of existing electrical outlets. But it’s equipped with componentry to make it a controllable node on a network, including an RFID chip, microprocessor, and wireless networking. The company plans to introduce the product next week.

The “smart plugs” will be able to give detailed information on how much electricity individual appliances are using. Because it’s programmable, people can also control appliances. For example, a person could have a TV set-top box turn off at midnight and turn on again at 7 in the morning.

What really interesting is that a set of plugs create a mesh network and can send information via a home or office building router to Zerofootprint. The company’s software processes and analyzes the data, showing people how the energy use compares to others.

“It will completely transform our world when plugs talk to each and interact with each,” said Ron Dembo, the CEO of Zerofootprint.

For residential customers, it makes most sense to use plugs for areas that draw a lot of power, such entertainment centers and home computers, Dembo said. He estimated the cost is about $50 now but he expects that price would drop significantly if made at larger scale.

The company has built early versions of the product is seeking out companies willing to test it out, such as utilities or appliance makers looking for a way to get information on products.

There are many companies developing energy-management software and devices aimed at helping people reduce wasted electricity use. One of the main technical challenges is getting information from appliances.

For example, IBM and utility Consert are running a trial smart-grid program where large appliances, such as HVAC systems and hot water heaters, are equipped with controllers that can feed data to a meter with two-way communications. Data is collected using a home’s Internet connection and the consumer can view energy data and control appliances from a Web page.

Google’s energy-monitoring application PowerMeter can get detailed data using either a smart meter or a home energy display, typically installed by an electrician. Zerofootprint’s Dembo said that the TalkingPlug approach, where monitoring and control is placed at the point of use, can be cheaper than existing methods once products are made at large scale.

(via: Cnet)