Small-scale power goes global

Fuel cell technology converts biomass from a stove into electricity.

Developing countries are often plagued with unreliable energy sources, a niche a new Berkeley, Calif.-based startup is working to fill. Point Source Power is working to help provide off-the-grid electricity to some of the 1.6 billion people worldwide who don’t currently have access to it.

“We think part of the solution is small-scale power,” says Craig Jacobson, founder of the company, which is developing low-cost energy solutions based on fuel cell technology. The small device allows a person to charge their cell phone, LED light or other product using the biomass energy from their stove that is converted to electricity. It retails for about U.S. $4. 

Point Source Power, which was the winner of Cleantech Open’s first-ever Global Cleantech Open Ideas Competition, has an exclusive license to market the fuel cell technology developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkley.  

Point Source Power plans to begin sales and marketing of the device first in East Africa and Kenya. India and Southeast Asia are also priority markets.

A six-year drought in Kenya has made hydrogen energy sources unreliable, according to Jacobson. Controlled power generation is Point Source Power’s response to this unreliability. It costs about $470 to hook up a power line to a home in Kenya, according to Jacobson. 

“That’s a lot of money when you’re living on just a few dollars a day,” he says.  

According to Jacobson, the energy sources in India are state controlled, and therefore, people can’t control when their power is turned on or off. “The idea that you can, as an individual, take control of that and really decide how you want to generate your power is a big deal,” Jacobson says. “They are hungry for an alternative solution.”  

Increasing concerns around climate legislation and energy independence has led the U.S. small-scale power market to grow in recent years. The market grew from $2.8 billion in 2003 to $6.1 billion in 2008, according to a report by BBC Research. 

Small-scale nuclear, a controversial issue, is gaining traction in the United States. In June of 2009, Toshiba proposed a small-scale nuclear power plant in the village of Galena in Alaska. The reactor is designed to produce 10 megawatts (MW) of electricity for 30 years without refueling. The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council has already voiced opposition because of the leftover waste from spent fuel.
 
Hyperion Power Generation, a New Mexico-based company that has the exclusive license to develop small-scale nuclear reactors developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in November 2009 revealed its first reactor at the annual winter conference of the American Nuclear Society in Washington, D.C. The reactor would deliver approximately 25 MW of electricity—enough to power 20,000 average U.S. homes or the industrial/commercial equivalent, according to the company. The price tag for each reactor is $50 million. Delivery is not expected until 2013. An initial capital investment of $176 million for Hyperion was provided by Altira Group.

And Corvallis, Ore.-based NuScale Power, which has 65 employees and an undisclosed amount of venture capital, is commercializing a modular, scalable 45-MW reactor developed at Oregon State.

It might be a while before small-scale reactors hit the market: Toshiba’s is being reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it could take the startups up to $100 million and five years to get their reactor designs certified by commission, according to a recent article in Wall Street Journal.