Smart Energy News

New York, N.Y. – CPower, a provider of energy demand response and management technology and services, has agreed to be acquired by Constellation Energy, a supplier of energy products and services to wholesale and retail electric and natural gas customers in the U.S. and Canada. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2001, CPower provides its customers with a technical infrastructure and web-based portal that manages energy demand loads and provides consumption, performance and benchmarking analytics to help simplify energy reduction efforts. The company is authorized to manage and aggregate demand response capacity programs in New York, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states (PJM), California, Texas and Ontario, Canada.

CPower’s clients range from medium to large energy users in the industrial, commercial, retail and institutional sectprs, including Stanley Tools, CB Richard Ellis, Cushman Wakefield, Sears, NYU Langone Medical Center, and the Massachusetts State Division of Capital Asset Management.

Commenting on the acquisition in an announcement, Kathleen Hyle, senior vice president of Constellation Energy (NYSE:CEG), and COO of the company’s commercial division, said, “The expanded sales and marketing presence and diverse demand response expertise will accelerate deployment and commercialization of our recently introduced online energy management product, VirtuWatt.”

CPower website

Constellation Energy website

Montreal, Quebec – The Government of Canada has announced that it will invest up to $65 million over ten years for two wind farms in the Gaspe region.

One of the two projects, the L’Anse-a-Valleau wind farm, consists of 67 turbines, capable of generating up to 100 megawatts of electricity. The second wind farm, Carleton, consists of 73 turbines and is capable of producing 109.5 megawatts of electricity.

Together, the two wind farms will provide enough electricity to power as many as 60,000 homes.

Public funding for the projects is being made through the $1.5-billion ecoENERGY for Renewable Power program, which provides a one cent per kilowatt-hour incentive, with the goal of increasing Canada’s renewable electricity capacity by more than 4,000 megawatts, or enough to power a million homes.

Canada’s Economic Action Plan is funded with an additional $2.4 billion to support the development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies and supporting infrastructure, including the country’s Clean Energy Fund and the Green Infrastructure Fund.

ecoENERGY for Renewable Power program

Salt Lake City — GreenFire Energy, a Salt Lake City-based developer of technology for creating renewable energy from both natural and waste-stream carbon dioxide, announced on Wednesday that the Department of Energy has awarded it a $2 million grant to investigate the potential for low-temperature CO2-based geothermal power production technologies.

GreenFire’s technology uses geothermally heated and pressurized carbon dioxide in closed-loop systems to produce electricity. The new grant money will be used to initiate research and development at the St. Johns Dome, a natural CO2 dome in eastern Arizona that sits atop a large geothermal heat resource.

GreenFire plans to produce CO2 through wells, similarly to how super-heated water is produced in a conventional geothermal design. The CO2 will then be cycled through a heat exchanger that will create steam for electrical turbines, while the CO2 will be recompressed and reinjected into the geologic formation in a closed-loop system without atmospheric CO2 emissions.

GreenFire hopes to eventually build 50-megawatt modular geothermal plants that would use naturally occurring CO2 from the St. Johns Dome as well as that from industrial suppliers.

GreenFire Energy website

San Francisco — Sharp Corp., the Japanese electronics manufacturing giant, has agreed to pay up to $305 million to acquire Recurrent Energy, a privately held, San Francisco-based power producer and developer of distributed solar projects.

Founded in 2006, Recurrent finances solar installations for real estate property owners, who in turn sign long-term power purchasing agreement, while Recurrent has the responsibility of maintaining the system.

The scale of solar photovoltaic projects that Recurrent focuses on are typically in the range of a large corporate facility or a small power plant that serves utilities.

“With Recurrent Energy’s know-how as a developer, Sharp aims to become a
the photovoltaic field, extending from developing and producing solar cells and modules to developing and marketing power generation plants,” said Toshishige Hamano, Sharp’s executive vice president for overseas business, in an announcement.

Recurrent Energy will retain its name and operate as a separate subsidiary of Sharp, while Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy, will retain his title and continue to lead the company.

Recurrent Energy website

Emeryville, Calif. – Amyris, a developer of microbial technologies for producing biofuels and medicines, has filed an amendment to its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of stock, indicating that it intends to sell about 5.3 million shares and raise an estimated $121 million in the deal.

In April, the company indicated in an SEC filing that it intended to raise an estimated $100 million.

Founded in 2003 and based in Emeryville, Calif., Amyris initially developed its technology under a non-profit initiative to provide a reliable and affordable source of artemisinin, which is an anti-malarial drug.

The company has developed genetic engineering and screening technologies that modify the way microbes process sugar, turning them into “living factories, or biorefineries.” It is now applying its industrial synthetic biology platform to provide alternatives to a range of petroleum-sourced products.

Amyris is focusing on Brazilian sugarcane as its primary biofuel feedstock. Its subsidiaries include Amyris Brasil, a majority-owned Brasilian company through which it conducts Brasilian operations for the manufacture and trade of products, and Amyris Fuels, a wholly-owned subsidiary through which it is building U.S. fuels distribution capabilities.

Amyris has raised a total of around $244 million in venture capital and employs about 200 people.

Amyris website

Amyris’ SEC filing