With its 53MW capacity project with the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), thermal energy storage vendor Ice Energy , in the words of its CEO Frank Ramirez, “crossed the endless pilot chasm” and transitioned into a technically and economically viable provider of load shifting capability to utilities.  The SCPPA project will deploy approximately 6,000 Ice Bear energy storage units on over 1,500 commercial and industrial rooftops.  While this is an important market development, it hides something even more significant – the fact that each Ice Bear ships with excess computing and communications capabilities.

Someone at fuel cell manufacturer Bloom Energy knows the recipe to get journalistic coverage of a product: Claim a heritage from the space program (the company’s founder K.R. Sridhar was involved in Mars mission research), get a big-name venture capital firm (Kleiner Perkins) to invest a lot of money (reportedly $400 million) and then let the whole operation bake in stealth mode for an inordinate amount of time (seven years). Finally, get Google involved somehow (the Mountain View, CA Internet colossus is Bloom’s first customer).  Today, Bloom Energy officially comes out of the oven with its 100 kW distributed generation fuel cells and, right on plan, it has garnered an inordinate amount of the Internet and the media’s attention, including mentions in 60 Minutes and The New York Times. While the Bloom gurus have handled the P.R. process masterfully, they forgot to mention a few other things about their Bloom boxes:

Just a week after the American Wind Energy Association released its initial installation numbers for North America, with the startling finding that more than 9 and half Gigawatts of new wind capacity was added in 2009, Europe has actually done even better. The European Wind Energy Association announced that the continent had more than 10 Gigawatts of installations last year. This vindicates IDC Energy Insights' bullish position on wind last year (but even we were too timid--predicting 7 GW in North America).

The news today that Germany is reducing its solar photovoltaic subsidy by 17% was greeted by the industry as depressing news. Germany, after all, buys the majority of solar panels and its generous subsidy has helped the industry to achieve the transformative efficiency and cost gains of the last few years. But industry insiders shouldn't be so glum: the new rules will make solar power more competitive in the long run, which is the purpose of the subsidy in the first place.

Next Thursday, January 14th, we will present our annual Top 10 predictions for the North American utility industry in a webcast that will be broadcast live from 11:00 a.m. to noon, U.S. Eastern time.  Use this link http://bit.ly/6xOLhF to register for free.

North American utility companies were negatively impacted in 2009 by the recession, which decreased energy consumption and thus reduced utility revenues, as well as by the credit crisis - both of which forced utilities to curtail spending and conserve cash.  In 2010 we expect North American utilities, particularly electric utilities, to benefit from the general economic recovery but more importantly from government intervention in the form of stimulus funding, tax breaks and other favorable policy initiatives.

Solar Reserve, the central solar thermal developer whose power tower receiver technology is based on rocket science (literally) announced today that it has signed a 100 MW power purchase agreement (PPA) with NV Energy for a project in Nye County, NV. That's big news for Solar Reserve, but it's also important as a test for molten salt thermal storage, a technology that is critical for the future success of the industry.

Two awards in the Department of Energy's smart grid demonstration program take flywheel energy storage a turn closer to reality. The concept of flywheels is relatively simple: take energy off the grid to spin a cylinder in a vacuum and add energy back on to the grid by turning that kinetic motion into electricity. But various attempts in the past to turn that idea into a real and economical form of energy storage have failed to find traction. Now Beacon Energy, a long-time player in the flywheel space, and Amber Kinetics, a startup out of Stanford, have been awarded a combined $28 million to bring their systems to market.