November 17, 2006- The Aug. 15 power outage in the Northeast that left 50 million people without electricity brought with it a not-unsurprising rush of questions, fears, and fingerpointing – not to mention plenty of ideas on how to answer the energy needs of today and tomorrow.

The incident that many have deemed "a wake-up call" has helped refocus attention on a number of alternative power sources and conservational practices, such as wind power, solar power, and fuel cells.

"The recent blackout really puts an exclamation point on the need for alternative and backup power sources," said Marc Regberg, a vice president at market research company Venture Development Corp. in Natick. "The trigger's been pulled, the gun's been fired, and I think this will be a big impetus for fuel cells, microturbines and 'gensets' (or generator sets, stand-alone electricity-producing generators)."

But wind and solar are generally viewed as complementary rather than primary power sources, and fuel-cell technology is likely to remain cost prohibitive for at least a decade.

For a startup in Woburn, the answer is distributed generation, provided by its own microturbine.

"The power grid structure as it is now is like the PC-versus-mainframe problem," said Joern Kallmeyer, chief executive officer at Wilson TurboPower. "When the grid goes down, like the mainframe, nobody can work. That's exactly what's been done here."

November 10, 2006- Five cleantech startups were voted “most promising” by their peers Thursday at Infocast’s Energy Venture Fair in Santa Clara, California.

The companies included Wilson TurboPower, Zolo Technologies, KiteShip, Ice Energy, and Hythane, and they were selected from among 75 presenting companies at the event.

“It’s always validating to be acknowledged by one’s peers for having a transforming and powerful technology,” said Frank Ramirez, chief executive of Ice Energy, after receiving his award.

“In concert with a number of other competitors here, we all share [the same] objective—to save energy, to be more efficient, to use the iron in the ground better, to assure a legacy for our children, and to provide the promise of a better life for those who follow us,” he added.

Here are the five winners:

Wilson TurboPower Raising $20 Million
This MIT spinoff, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, has a heat exchanger—a device that transfers heat from one medium to another—that it said loses only 5 percent of the heat in the process, making it 10 to 25 percent more efficient than competing exchangers.

November 1, 2006 Heat Exchanger Turns More Efficient

For a long time, engineers have thought they could improve turbine efficiency by using a rotating heat exchanger. The concept is simple. Start with a circular filter. Expose the top half of the filter to hot exhaust gases. Then spin that hot section down to the inlet duct to preheat incoming air. Instead of just relying on conduction, the system puts the heat in front of the incoming air. The result is a big jump in efficiency, especially for microturbine engines.

The problem is getting it to work. High outlet-duct temperatures quickly degrade metals. In fact, most recuperators precool their exhaust stream before it enters the heat exchanger to prolong the unit's operating life.

Ceramics, on the other hand, stand up to high outlet temperatures. Their higher thermal capability enables them to recover and reuse more heat than metals can. Unfortunately, constantly rotating ceramic heat exchangers soon grind away their seals. This allows hot air to escape through the gaps, losing any efficiencies that switching to ceramics might have gained.

October 25, 2004 WILSON TURBOPOWER Joern Kallmeyer, 32, was convinced he had found a great idea and a great technology. But his concept was complicated and expensive to develop. His funding pitches were going nowhere until he participated in MIT's $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. There he got advice and made some connections that helped him raise $1.5 million.

Kallmeyer, an electrical engineer by training, was a student at MIT's Sloan School of Management when he met professor David Wilson, who had devised a new technology for heat transfer using ceramics. Turbines generate heat that, with the help of a heat exchanger, can be recycled to fuel engines. Most exchangers are made of metal, which radiates a lot of heat. A ceramic exchanger theoretically could hold more heat and withstand higher temperatures, but no one had figured out how to seal it to keep the heat from escaping. Wilson thought he had the answer, at least in theory, but hadn't done the engineering to make it work. In 2001, Kallmeyer and another engineer, Rich McCray, began working on a specialized case to hold a ceramic heat exchanger.

The next year, Kallmeyer, Wilson, and McCray made it to the semifinals of MIT's $50K Entrepreneurship Competition…  Read More about it at Business Week