Clean Energy Startup Infinia Raises $50 Million To Crank up Manufacturing
Erick Schonfeld
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If you thought clean energy financings were hot last year, 2008 promises to be scorching. Case in point: Infinia today raised a $50 million series B, led by British hedge fund GLG partners. Existing investors Equus, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gross’ Idealab, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital also participated in the round (after putting in $9.5 million just last June).
Infinia has developed utility-scale renewable energy technology that combines a Stirling engine with a large solar collector. The Stirling engine, a technology that’s been around since the 19th century, converts the heat into electricity. Infinia used to be called Stirling Cycles, and has been around for more than two decades. It has designed Stirling engines as power sources for NASA missions, implantable artificial hearts, and cooling devices that the army uses in Iraq. Now, it is focussed exclusively on using the technology to create 14-foot diameter solar collectors that can generate 3.5 kilowatts of energy apiece. Gang together 50 or 100 (at about $20,000 a pop) and you have the energy producing capacity of a small power plant.
Infinia’s Stirling engine is powered by a free-moving piston that requires no lubricants, and thus no maintenance. “What makes this unique is the no-maintenance profile,” says chief financial officer, Gregg Clevenger, “the ability to deploy a Stirling engine out in the desert and it is engineered to run for 20 years without you having to do anything.” It is also designed to be assembled with common mass-produced parts that an auto-parts supplier could manufacture. Getting the cost down is the key to creating a technology that is competitive with other forms of energy.
Using its Stirling engine technology, Inifnia thinks it can eventually produce electricity 20 to 30 percent cheaper than today’s existing solar panels. And in times of peak energy demand—on a hot summer day, for instance—it could even be competitive with electricity from gas-powered or coal-fired plants. Renewable energy isn’t going to replace fossil-fuel technologies off the bat, but if they make economic sense for utilities to deploy in a hybrid grid, they will become more cost-competitive over time. With this round, there is $50 million on the table that says Infinia will be one of the companies that makes renewable energy more affordable.
Clean Energy Startup Infinia Raises $50 Million To Crank up Manufacturing
Time to get rid of the extremely expensive solar panels.
Thank you, oil prices, for your contribution to technology progress…
Good article, interesting content, but I think TC could use investment in editing:
“putting in $9.5million just June”…last June?
“and has been around fro more than two decades”…yeah, fros were popular about then
“Now, it is focussed exclusively”…does that mean they were doubly focused?
Any business model that has a track record of being profitable–especially if it has the word “environmental friendly” associated anywhere with it will be hot right now. I also suspect it to only get hotter, even a few years from now.
Suniva is another solar company that last week raised $50 million. The space is indeed hot.
Solar and wind energy have proven not to be a good solution for green energy. Fusion energy seems to be real in several years. The first fusion reactor will be ready in the next century, if everything goes by schedule. See it here:
http://www.duckway.com/spice/iter
Good news.
Alternative energy is a hot sector and while we will buy more electric accessories - they will raise more money and develop new ways to make energy.
It’s awesome these days to be in the energy business.
Simply Great! SES Systems is not for small players, atleast Infinia can provide this technology at affordable price to small power plant investors. What i can think is, instead of going for solar PV 5 or 10 home owners can unite and create a small infinia based stirling engine power plant which way economical. And utility companies should consider the power generated by this power plant as the home owners generated and should give credits virtually.
Great news..
what happens at night?
@3: Couldn’t agree more. It’s not specific to TechCrunch - I’ve seen it on Gizmodo in the last week or two - but they seriously need a proof-reader.
@9: Batteries!
By the way, clean energy includes energy efficiency and clean energy supply options like highly efficient combined heat and power as well as renewable energy sources.
I know someone who put solar panels on his roof and tied it into California’s power grid. When the panels produced a surplus, the power meter would spin backwards. As a result, his net power bill was negative. This was part of state’s plan (http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/3588) to move towards renewable energy sources.
I wonder if there’s market in selling a smaller version of these units to the home market. Would it be more efficient than solar panels? Are they noisy?
At $20,000 a pop for 3.5 measly kilowatts, your looking at a higher installed cost ($5,714/kW) than either current PV or Thermal Solar Power. The installed cost of PV Solar is $4,751/kW. Thermal Solar is $3,149/kW. Also, solar will only have a real impact with distributed generation, where solar panels on roofs make the most sense.
So I assume that the stirling engine technology is already in use in things like geothermal energy plants, or reusing waste heat from industrial processes?
Is there anything particularly new about the companies products, apart from economies of scale perhaps?
Ryan, you are right as per installed cost, but what about maintenance for a solar thermal plant. Here for stirling engine there are no moving parts, no maintenance for 20 years.
For thermal plant, you need people, turbines, maintenance, water blah blah.
Solar PV has 10 to 12% efficiency. Stirling has 24%.
Go Solar!
Peace!
Kris
Is it really 20,000$ a piece installed? I don’t believe the price.. Too cheap..
Kevin, unless people are willing to stick these on their lawns, its not going make any real impact. These just don’t produce enough power for it to make sense to build a centralized “power plant” out of them.
And if you do, why not build a wind farm instead? More power (~1.2 MW per turbine v. 3.5kW), and they typically have higher efficiency than 24%
Ryan, The initial investment for 1.2 MW wind turbine is very high to the tune of 1.5 million $ and needs maintenance.
Of course it’s more economical in large scale.
You are right, striling sytems are not intended to put in peoples lawn but sure it will make a small scale power plant with zero maintenance.
I’m not sure that this will be the one, but hopefully someone solves the energy crisis soon…
i could not belive this cost. i hope this will be effective to developed countires and not in developing countires like india.
I hope the company will make renewable energy inexpensive.
Everything old is new again. Stirling engines are a great idea with the next thing needed to make this technology viable is a way to store up energy on sunny days for those when Sol stays hidden behind the clouds, or switch to a wavelength that isn’t affected so much by gray days. Thanks for your coverage of this exciting development in solar energy generation!
What the heck, they updated the price from 10,000$ to 20,000$ !
huh..
what Micheal? giving us wrong data? come on..