Recent NY-BEST™ News and Notes

Walmart Canada Corp projects major productivity savings offsetting its investment in a fleet of Crown Equipment Corp PC4500 pallet trucks utilising Plug Power Inc GenDrive-brand hydrogen fuel cells.

HUDSON — If the Capital Region is going to become a major center for advanced manufacturing and renewable energy technologies, the workforce has to be trained even before college. That's the approach educators at Questar III's Columbia-Greene Educational Center here in Hudson are taking with their students.

A new report from the Brookings Institution [PDF] finds investment in clean energy is paying off for New York. Brookings found that the states known to have clean energy funds have invested $2.7 billion in renewable energy in the past decade. And they're seeing that investment come back four-fold. "It's important to do everything". The report notes that New York invested $15.6 million in clean and renewable energy in fiscal year 2010, and has sunk $114 million into energy development over the past dozen years.

U.S. auto-safety regulators are pleased with General Motors Co. (GM)'s plan to fix its Volt electric cars following fires in crash testing, National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland said. GM, based in Detroit, told owners last week to bring their Volts back to dealerships to have steel added to shield the cars' lithium-ion batteries. Strickland's agency opened an investigation into the Volt's battery in November.

On Thursday GM announced it had engineered an expedient but effective solution to post-crash-test battery fires reported by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and will ask Chevrolet Volt drivers to return to their dealers for the one-day reinforcing procedure. Despite ongoing distortions of facts by critics including one Fox News pundit who suggested the vehicle might "blow up," federal authorities have repeated that the Volt is safe and GM says its voluntary measure is intended to keep showing why the Volt is rated #1 in customer satisfaction.

When General Motors cancelled its EV1 electric car in 2003, some called it a technology tragedy. The cars, which could travel around 60 miles on a single charge of their lead-acid batteries, were taken off the roads and crushed. Protesters staged a mock funeral; others accused GM of failing intentionally. While GM never revealed the actual cost of building an EV1 (the vehicles were only leased, not sold), the company had invested $1.5 billion in the project. But it declared the car an economic failure with no chance of reaching a mass market.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo touted Albany's hub of high-tech research and computer-chip manufacturing in his State of the State speech on Wednesday. Cuomo held it up as a model for what he wants to achieve in Buffalo—where he wants to spend $1 billion of economic development aid over the next few years."There is a vibrancy in the Capital District region around nanotechnology that would not have happened but for the state's investment," Cuomo said.

Battery developer Eos Energy Storage claims to have solved key problems holding back a battery technology that could revolutionize grid energy storage. If the company is right, its zinc-air batteries will be able to store energy for half the cost of additional generation from natural gas—the method currently used to meet peak power demands.

The Official R&D 100 Entry Page is now open to accept entries for the 2012 R&D 100 Awards, the 50th anniversary of the competition. Before you visit this page, please download the official R&D 100 Awards Entry Form. This form is the official guide for your 2012 entry. The competition is open to any new technology that was first available for sale or licensing in the 2011 calendar year, and which meets the qualifications detailed in the entry form. The deadline for applications is March 16, 2012. Sign up for the R&D 100 mailing list to receive updates about the awards...

The Obama administration intends to open a new advanced battery research center this year, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told an audience at the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday.

ClearEdge Power, a fuel cell startup that closed a $73.5 million VC round in 2011, just scored one of the largest fuel cell orders in the 150-year history of fuel cells. The firm builds proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells that produce electricity and heat from natural gas. It just inked a 50-megawatt supply agreement with Austria's Güssing Renewable Energy (GRE). The first phase is the delivery of 8.5 megawatts of fuel cells over the next three years. That's about 1,700 5-kilowatt modules. Phase two is 20 megawatts by 2020 in what ClearEdge says is a $500 million agreement.

Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafcik said at the Detroit auto show that the company would begin offering a lifetime battery guarantee on the lithium polymer batteries in the Sonata hybrid. Hyundai will guarantee the battery on the Sonata hybrid.He said the offer was viable because of the "superior performance in durability" of the lithium polymer batteries, which are lasting in the range of 275,000 miles in the company's tests. Hyundai conducts powertrain testing and calibration work at its 170-person technical center in Superior Township.

The electric vehicle has to overcome three major hurdles if it is ever going to be a success with consumers. They need to charge fast, be cheap to buy, and have a decent range between charges. At the moment, the range of electric vehicles is around about 100 miles on average, which may be adequate for most journeys, but certainly isn't good enough. The issue is the battery technology in use today that relies on lithium-ion, and whose make-up is rather heavy and energy density not really high enough for use in a vehicle. IBM has been developing an alternative though, using a type of battery...

BYD Co., which counts Warren Buffett as an investor, has completed the world's largest lithium-ion battery project to bottle wind and solar electricity in China, which will likely see more large energy storage projects as a result of its ambition to add lots of renewable energy. The Chinese electric car and battery maker finished the 36 megawatt-hours storage farm in December for the State Grid Corporation of China, a transmission company with a massive plan to pair storage with wind and solar power plants, said Micheal Austin, vice president of BYD America on Tuesday. BYD's batteries will...

As I reported in Tuesday's paper, some companies think that one form of renewable energy is going to open a window for another — that solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, are going to increase the grid's need for a type of solar energy that can be stored. That would be solar thermal power, which harnesses heat from the sun and converts it to steam to make electricity as the need arises, especially when the sun has disappeared behind a cloud or dropped below the horizon.