3 ideas of start-ups in the field of renewable energy

Hawaii - an attractive location for the development of renewable energy, primarily because the state is heavily dependent on fossil fuel imports to meet energy needs. The cost of electricity in Hawaii is three times higher than the average in the United States, making renewable energy more competitive with conventional energy sources.

Energy Excelerator, founded in January 2013 Company of the Year, aims to help budding entrepreneurs in promoting their development in the energy sector. This year, the company has set up the fund in the amount of three million dollars to support new projects in the sphere of energy and energy saving. Applicants for funding of this fund began 42 new startups. Here talked about three interesting ideas start-ups from this cohort.




Pono Home
Pono Home The company offers its customers to improve energy efficiency and to save energy in their home or business systems.

"We come to your home or office and conduct energy audit, and then on the spot to implement measures to save energy, rather than just give the client a report with recommendations that it should implement their own," says Scott Cooney (Scott Cooney), Director Pono Home.

The average payback period costs that the customer is responsible for Pono Home Services, is less than a year for private households and from three to six months for the enterprises.

SheerWind
The idea arose from a startup SheerWind Daryoush Allaei when looking for ideas on how to reduce the noise of wind turbines.

Patented SheerWind Invelox technology is to collect wind from all directions, forward it to the tunnel, which increases air flow rate, and then skip this thread a few wind turbines that convert the energy of the stream, now has a higher energy density, into an electric current. On leaving the tunnel widens, which reduces the speed of the effluent.



Furthermore, the technology that provides Invelox noise reduction, it has several other advantages over conventional wind turbines. In particular, it produces electricity even when the wind speed is less than 2 miles per hour, compared to 8 miles per hour for conventional turbines and is not dangerous for the birds. In addition, 50 percent reduced support costs and more than 70% of the increased efficiency of the plant.

Edisun
Startup Edisun builds commercial concentrating solar power plant in conjunction with energy storage. Technology is an array of mirrors that collect the sun's rays, directing them to a container filled with stones of local origin. By solar energy stones are heated to 500 degrees Celsius and is kept warm for a long time. The company claims that the technology is less complex than the energy storage based on molten salts, and 50 times less than conventional batteries and costs $ 10 per kilowatt-hour. At the same time, this device is able to generate electricity at any time, and, moreover, does not require any exotic materials or special handling.

This setup allows you to convert solar energy into heat and then direct it to a heat exchanger to generate electricity. Due to the relatively small size (all the components of the installation can be placed in a container 40 feet long), this technology is not expensive and can be placed on a smaller area than other solar projects.

Edisun launched a demo version of their installation capacity of 25 kilowatt-hours in Pasadena, California. It is designed for energy storage for 5 hours. A more powerful setting, at 100 kilowatt-hours of energy storage from 8 to 12 hours, the company is building with the assistance of Energy Excelerator.