The Renewable Energy Business Network (REBN), a networking group for cleantech professionals with 10,000 members across 17 local chapters and a strong presence in the Boston area, has merged with the Clean Economy Network Foundation (CENF), a young cleantech policy research and education organization based in Washington, DC.

The news came today in an e-mail to all REBN members from founder Rob Day, currently a partner at Boston-based Black Coral Capital.

“REBN has been growing by leaps and bounds and frankly it outgrew our ability to support it with the really thin organization that we had,” Day tells Xconomy. “We started talked with CENF because they were already thinking about how they were going to tackle community building at the national level. They are a great organization, and they are full-time on this, and now we are going to be able to bring that support to REBN. And for them, it means they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

“There is so much synergy these days between the policy part that CENF has been working on and the networking stuff that business people care about that it just made a lot of sense” to merge the two organizations, Day continues.

The REBN name will be gradually phased out and replaced by the Clean Economy Network label, Day says. “The ‘renewable energy’ part of REBN was a bit of an anachronism anyway,” he says. “We’ve been getting into efficiency and even things like water and materials. It’s all one community, really.”

REBN co-executive directors Laura Bartsch and Helen Fairman have become network co-directors at CENF. The group’s executive director, Jeff Anderson, was formerly campaign manager at Cleantech and Green Business for Obama, a grassroots group that lobbied for the election of Barack Obama as president.

But while Day acknowledges that “these guys have shown themselves to be pretty effective community organizers,” he sayd CENF itself “is a non-partisan organization that is not involved in policy advocacy. That means REBN will continue to be non-partisan, not supporting one politician or blue or red or anything like that, but simply in favor of supporting the development of a clean economy.”

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When utility customers can see exactly how much energy they’re consuming, and how, they can be far smarter about using it. That’s the argument made by Powerhouse Dynamics, a Newton, MA, startup developing energy-management software that lets users observe and control the flow of power through their homes.

To fund the effort, the company is raising $2 milion in venture funding, according to a report this morning from Dow Jones VentureWire. Powerhouse CEO Martin Flusberg told the publication, in an interview at the Greenbuild International conference in Phoenix, that the round will close in November or December; he wouldn’t name the investors.

Flusberg is the co-founder and former president of Nexus Energy Software, which was sold to ESCO Technologies in 2005. Co-founder and chief technology office Carsten Steenberg formerly led U.S. operators for Danish firms I-Data and Phase One. (Powerhouse’s website also says that Steenberg “is an expert on Cold Fusion technology.”) The third co-founder, Dan Kaplan, the company’s chairman and chief marketing officer, was co-founder of LowerMyBills.com, now owned by Experian.

Powerhouse disclosed in a regulatory filing in April that it had raised $225,000 out of a planned $750,000 debt financing round. The documents show that the company was formed in 2007 and was originally based in Blue Hill, ME.

According to the Powerhouse website, the company’s PC-based software, called eMonitor, keeps tabs on “every circuit in the home,” including solar photovoltaic panels (assuming the home has them), lets homeowners control their thermostat, issues trouble alerts and energy-saving suggestions, and provides a picture of a home’s overall carbon footprint. In a blog post, Flusberg says the software works because it provides feedback that “allows consumers to see the impact of their behavior and take steps to change.”

The Powerhouse site says the eMonitor software will be “widely available in late 2009,” but Flusberg told Venture Wire that the company will ship only about 100 units this quarter, with a wider release coming next year. Flusberg said the eMonitor product will cost $600 plus a $12 monthly subscription.

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It must be Clean Energy Week in Boston, judging from all of the trophies, plaques, and award checks being handed out to the region’s energy and cleantech innovation leaders. We wanted to tell you about the winners in two of this week’s biggest events: the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Ignite Clean Energy Prize business plan competition finals, held at the State House on November 10, and the New England Clean Energy Council’s Green Tie Gala, held at the John F. Kennedy Library last night.

The big winners in the Ignite Clean Energy Prize competition—the fifth annual iteration of the event, sponsored this year by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center—were the following:

Grand Prize: IntAct Labs of Cambridge, MA, which is developing microbial fuel cells and protein-based biosensors and photovoltaic devices. IntAct walked away with $150,000 in cash and in-kind prizes from Mintz Levin, CHT Group, the UMass Dartmouth Applied Technology and Manufacturing Center, and T3 Advisors.

Second Place: InnoSepra Coal, which is developing lower-cost ways to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by coal combustion at power plants, and using the captured CO2 in oil and gas exploration.

Third Place: EGG Energy, which is building rental “solar stations” for recharging batteries in poor, rural regions of Africa.

“Each year, we see a variety of technologies and people participate in ICE – each team beginning the competition with brilliant ideas and completing the process with real market impact,” said Clark Waterfall, chair of the competition and managing director at Boston Based BSG Team Ventures, in a press statement about the awards. “This year is no different and I congratulate the IntAct team on their victory and I congratulate all of the teams for playing a role in strengthening the clean tech industry.”

I was all dressed up last night and ready to go to NECEC’s Green Tie Gala, but was stopped in my tracks by car trouble, of all things. Guess it’s time to get a Prius! Here’s a rundown of the awards that I didn’t get to see handed out:

Breakout Company of the Year: EnerNOC, for “achieving an inflection point in revenue growth and establishing itself as both an industry leader and a market-maker.” (2008 winner: A123Systems)

Emerging Company of the Year: QD Vision, for “exiting its development phase with tremendous momentum.” (2008 winner: Aspen Aerogels)

Employer of the Year: American Superconductor, for “growing its workforce by a substantial margin, and providing good, high-paying jobs to its community.” (2008 winner: GT Solar)

Corporate Citizen of the Year: Millipore, for “its adoption of clean energy technology and energy efficiency measures in order to reduce its carbon footprint.” (2008 winner: Staples)

Clean Energy Hall of Fame Inductee: Steve Cowell, CEO of Conservation Services Group, for “his dedication to clean energy, and truly setting an example for others to follow.” (2008 winner: Mark Farber)

Council Leadership Awards: Kevin Doyle from GreenEconomy and Wanda Reindorf from Conservation Services Group—the co-chairs of NECEC’s Workforce Development Group—for “their outstanding leadership in the support of Council activities.”

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San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) says Panoramic Power, a wireless sensor startup based in Kidron, Israel, is the winner of the first QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power has developed energy monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy Smart Grid technologies within their existing facilities. Panoramic Power, which previously won $100,000 as a QPrize regional winner, was awarded another $150,000 and the opportunity to compete in a global business plan competition held at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

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The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group says it has received $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a 400-megawatt wind farm in Klickitat County, WA, about 110 miles East of Portland, OR. Total investment in the project will be more than $1 billion. When completed, the Windy Point/Windy Flats project will be one of the largest wind farms in the nation, producing enough electricity for more than 250,000 homes per year. The project power has been designated for use by California municipalities.

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We’ve noticed a slowing of venture investment in cleantech and other aspects of energy here in New England. But put any green investment pessimism on hold this week—as today marks the start off what’s being touted as the third annual Clean Energy Week here in Massachusetts. In a week of charged-up presentations from Springfield to Boston, we’ve got networking, investor pitches, a “green tie” gala, and LOTS of startups. In fact, I’ve counted 52 startup pitches across the week, and that’s not counting the 10 finalists in the Ignite Clean Energy Competition, who will be at the State House in Boston on Tuesday, and any others I have missed.

It would be hard for anyone to make all these events. But below are some highlights, and you can find a more complete overview here.

Monday (today)

—A short walk from Xconomy’s offices at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge, MA, is the sole event of the day, the Clean Energy Applied Research Discovery Workshop put on by SETsquared’s Clean Energy Mission to Boston. SETsquared is a research collaboration between four British universities: Bath, Bristol, Southampton, and Surrey. (I can’t figure out from the website if the event is open to the public, so I’m guessing it isn’t. But Xconomy staffers and friends can often be seen after work in the Bambara restaurant bar in the Marlowe.)

Tuesday

The pace of events really picks up on Tuesday.

—Clean Energy Connections, an all-day career and business development conference in Springfield, MA.

—Boston Cleantech Venture Day. This event, which takes place at the Boston offices of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, is put on by a coalition of various international chambers of commerce and business groups “to assist European Cleantech companies in exploring and taking advantage of opportunities in the US.” All told, some 17 European companies have come over to present at the conference, and the closing keynote speaker is Howard Berke, founder of Konarka Technologies.

—The highlight of the day will likely be the finals of the Ignite Clean Energy business plan competition put on by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge at the Massachusetts State House. You can find the business plan summaries of the 10 finalists who are vying for the $35,000 grand prize here. This event looks great, but it is sold out. Here’s what the website says about walk-ins: “If you choose to Walk-In we do not guarantee entrance into the event, will be based upon capacity of the room. Pre-Registered seats will be released at 12:50pm (20 minutes after presentations begin)…”

Wednesday

—University Research Briefing Day. This Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center event, held at MIT’s Tang Center, will feature faculty from Massachusetts institutions who will present their clean energy research. This is always a great event—and I hope to be able to make it.

—Green Tie Gala. This is the second year the New England Clean Energy Council has organized this event at the JFK Library & Museum. I don’t have a tux, but Wade does—and plans to be there. The keynoter is Congressman Ed Markey. The event is sold out, according to the registration page, even the $3,250 tables.

Thursday and Friday

—The week’s piece de resistance is the two-day Conference on Clean Energy organized by the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition at the Hynes Convention Center. Keynoters include Steve Koonin, under secretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, Governor Deval Patrick, and Ian Bowles, the state’s energy czar. MTTC director Abi Barrow says 35 companies from a variety of energy sectors will present at the conference, including four foreign firms—one from Norway and four from Britain.  The Sunday Times of London was very excited about the four from Britain and wrote this piece. And you can find the speaker list and bios here.

Wade hosted a podcast in advance of this conference—as he puts it, “previewing some of the themes that will be featured prominently at the event, ranging from the state of energy investing to the role of stimulus funding for energy startups.” You can find the podcast here.

—Also starting on Thursday and concluding Friday is the 17th Annual U.S.-Canada Energy Conference at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. The theme of this year’s event is “North American Energy: Forging ahead in the current economic and environmental climate.”

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It was a busy week for local technology news.

—Two teams from San Diego and a third from Northern California demonstrated their development of advanced chemical sensor prototypes that are tiny enough to be found inside ordinary cell phones. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding the Cell-All program, with a goal of basically creating an anti-terrorism app for cell phones that would enable authorities to crowd-source chemical detection.

—MaxLinear has filed for its initial public stock offering. The Carlsbad, CA-based fabless chipmaker, which specializes in designing semiconductor-based television receivers, intends to raise about $100 million through its IPO. The market may be de-frosting a bit, with 47 IPOs so far in 2009, compared with 45 last year, and 272 in 2007.

—ProQuo, a San Diego-based Web 2.0 company that was founded in 2007, was quietly shut down after taking in a total of $15 million in venture capital from Menlo Park, CA-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson and San Diego-based Mission Ventures. ProQuo was never able to validate its business model; its website offered consumers a way to remove their names from mass-mailing lists for free, and the company planned to sell its optimized lists back to mass marketing companies.

—San Diego’s wireless industry group, CommNexus, celebrated the opening of EvoNexus, its free high-tech incubator, by announcing the selection of three more startup companies: EcoATM, MicroPower Technologies, and TetraVue. CommNexus CEO Rory Moore says EvoNexus is believed to be the first incubator that is completely free for startups—that is, it doesn’t even require an equity stake in participating companies, as most incubuators do.

—Jitterbug, the San Diego wireless provider that puts an emphasis on simplicity, has acquired MobiWatch, a Waltham, MA-based startup developing mobile personal emergency response services. A regulatory filing shows that Jitterbug’s parent, GreatCall, provided 630,000 shares of common stock to MobiWatch and its shareholders in a deal valued at $107,100.

—San Diego-based Networkfleet is using its technology to help companies that operate fleets of vehicles go green by monitoring engine emissions and ensuring that vehicles are operating efficiently. Co-founder Diego Borrego told me the company also expects to be a player as consolidations sweep through the fleet tracking industry.

—EcoDog, a Vista, CA, cleantech startup that has developed a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill, was named best of show at GadgetFest, the annual fall competition sponsored by CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group. EcoDog founding CEO Ron Pitt won over the crowd when he declared, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

—San Diego-based cleantech startup EESG is looking to raise $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and ramp up public relations and marketing. The company’s founders told me they have raised about half so far, including $300,000 from Longboard Capital Advisors, a green investment firm based in Santa Monica, CA.

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Any company that owns or manages a data center, even a small one, knows how power-hungry they can be. It’s not unusual for operators of large data centers—say, 50,000 square feet—to pay $10 million a year or more for electricity. Under those circumstances, companies have every incentive to look to virtualization and other technologies that help them be more efficient. But data center energy management, it turns out, isn’t exactly a science: there’s no precise way to predict how much consolidating a few servers, for example, will reduce a company’s energy bills.

That’s the problem Viridity Software, a Burlington, MA, startup coming out of stealth mode today, hopes to solve. “We want to be able to tell a customer exactly what to do to optimize the life of their data center and decrease their energy footprint, or increase the amount of work they can do on the same energy and capital footprint,” says Mike Rowan, the company’s founder and chief technology officer.

To pursue that vision, Viridity has raised $7 million in Series A funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Battery Ventures, and has 22 employees working to ship a series of software products starting in the first quarter of 2010. The first product, Rowan says, will be a planning aid that helps data center managers see how adding or moving servers will change overall electrical load. Next will come a control module that provides a real-time picture of power utilization, not just by IT equipment, but by a data center’s heating and cooling systems. Finally, building on the data provided by the control module will be an optimization tool that studies a data center’s historical power use patterns and recommends the changes system administrators and facilities engineers should make to reduce power consumption.

“The cost of power in data centers is approaching the cost of the capital equipment,” says Rowan. Reducing power consumption, he says, is mainly a matter of understanding how power needs change under various computing workloads, and balancing those workloads more intelligently.

While Viridity is striking a mildly green pose—the company logo features a little green leaf sprouting from the “V”—Rowan thinks it’s the high cost of electricity, rather than concern about carbon emissions or climate change, that will ultimately send customers his way.

“You can put a business case around everyone of these decisions,” he says. “Why overtly talk about how it’s the right thing for the planet, when there’s a business case around it? You will get more done with less cost and less power.”

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Dave Paton and Dave Moody tell me they founded EESG, a San Diego cleantech startup also known as Energy Efficiency Systems Group, last year in anticipation that soaring energy prices would unleash strong demand for practical alternatives. But they didn’t focus on new technologies for alternative energy sources. They focused on energy efficiencies.

They also wanted to take advantage of their extensive experience with the hotel industry. Paton had spent 30 years working as an executive at the Hilton, Radisson, and Doubletree hotel companies. And the company the pair had previously founded, Vista, CA-based Paramount International Telecom, provided a voice-activated automated attendant and message system for the hospitality industry. So they knew hotels. As Paton and Moody put it, they understood that for a hotel to keep its four-star rating, it was going to have to keep the air-conditioning running through the summer.

As a result, Paton and Moody concluded that developing technologies to help hotels and other facilities improve their energy efficiency was a likely growth business ideally suited to their expertise and industry contacts. And it was a business that wouldn’t require huge amounts of external capital. The business partners say they set out to create a system that incorporated the best technologies for sensing and measuring energy use, for monitoring and communicating such information in meaningful ways, and for remotely managing everything—from the 15-ton air-conditioning chiller on the roof to the boiler in the basement.

“Every piece of equipment has a sweet spot that it operates at with optimum efficiency,” Moody says. The energy conservation and management systems that EESG has developed are designed to identify equipment throughout a facility, and to optimize the performance of each unit. “We know every model, every unit, every product type, and we know how to control it,” Moody says. “Our system is specifically programmed for that equipment, say a Trane 360, and to keep it operating at that sweet spot.”

To tie it all together, they hired software engineers to develop proprietary software analytics that provide a comprehensive and real-time energy audit of customer facilities. EESG also developed a Web-based interface that can be accessed online or by a smart phone. Paton says their system, once installed, reduces customers’ energy consumption by 8 percent to 15 percent annually. The partners say EESG has implemented its technology so far at four hotels in the U.S. and Canada, including the luxury Fairmont Hotel in Washington D.C.

Fairmont Hotel

“The building engineer can be anywhere in the world,” Moody says. “You just go to a secure portal, and see how the system is operating. Or maybe the vice president of asset management wants to drill down to one chiller at one property, but he also wants it aggregated to show all the chillers at all the buildings that he manages.”

So far, the founders have funded EESG’s technology development themselves, along with friends and family. But they are now looking to raise about $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and for public relations and marketing.

Moody and Paton say they have raised about half from wealthy individual investors and cleantech investment funds, such as Longboard Capital Advisors of Santa Monica, CA, which has invested $300,000 from its Blue Earth Fund in EESG’s current round.

“Although we typically do not invest in early stage companies, it was an easy choice to invest in the management at rapidly growing EESG,” Longboard managing partner Brett Conrad wrote in an e-mail to me last night. “We felt like our investment risk was further reduced by management’s deep experience and relationships in hotel and resort management around the world. Because Longboard Capital Advisors focuses on clean tech investing, we are particularly excited by EESG reducing their customer’s carbon output while at the same time while achieving extraordinary ROI’s by significantly reducing energy costs from power hungry air conditioners, elevators and escalators.”

Moody sums it up a little more succinctly. “It is a good green thing for sure,” he says, “but the bottom line is that it helps you save money.”

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[Updated and corrected---8:30 pm ET on 11/05/09]Marlboro, MA-based Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ:ESLR) said it will move its solar panel production from Massachusetts to China—dealing a blow to the clean technology economy in the commonwealth.

Evergreen plans to begin migrating the manufacturing of solar panels out of its Devens, MA, plant to a facility under construction in Wuhan, China, in mid-2010, the company announced in an earnings statement on Wednesday. A lull in demand for solar cells globally and other factors have caused the price of solar panels like the ones that Evergreen makes to plunge by more than 30 percent since mid-2008, when its Devens production facility opened, the firm said. However, the company said it does plan to continue producing its silicon wafers and cells in Devens. It will also produce the silicon wafers in China beginning next year.

An Evergreen spokesman was not immediately available for comment this afternoon, and it was unclear how relocating panel production would impact its work force in Massachusetts.

Manufacturing in China is intended to reduce overall production costs, and Evergreen said it is receiving a $33 million loan from Chinese government to help cover the expenses of moving into a new plant that the company will lease from a contract manufacturing firm called Jiawei Solar. Evergreen’s move may sting some Massachusetts politicians and taxpayers; the state committed $23 million in grants to the firm, behind considerable support from Gov. Deval Patrick and his administration, to support its manufacturing in Devens. And Ian Bowles, the state’s secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said in a statement about two years ago when construction of the Devens plant began that “we are breaking ground not only on a factory, but on the commonwealth’s clean energy future.”

Evergreen said it will manufacture its “String Ribbon” wafers at the facility it is building and will own in China, and that the wafers will then be sent to the the plant that its partner Jiawei Solar is building to convert the wafers into solar cells, which are used to make solar panels. The worldwide solar panel market has taken a beating over the past year or so due to reduced government spending or subsidies for the products in Spain and Germany, both of which are big solar panel users, as well as lower-than-projected demand in other countries such as the U.S., according to a recent report by Lux Research, which has an office in Boston. [Editor's note: the above paragraph was corrected to say that Evergreen, not its Chinese manufacturing partner, will build and own the facility where its silicon wafers will be produced in China. There are also added details from the company about the overall production process.]

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The moderators of San Diego’s 9th Annual GadgetFest kept saying during Tuesday night’s showcase for new technology products that past winners have gone on to even greater glory and success. That may or may not be good news for the Motorola Droid that goes on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores nationwide. After making a cursory appearance at CTIA and perhaps elsewhere, the Droid debuted its impressive features and ended the evening as runner-up.

GadgetFest moderators Ken Rutkowski and Andy Abramson reminded the audience that Grand Central, a GadgetFest winner three years ago, was acquired shortly after the 2006 event by Google (and has since been transformed into Google Voice). They also pointed to Motorola’s Q Phone, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and the Truphone as paragons of GadgetFest virtue. All three devices were introduced at GadgetFest instead of the CTIA or other major trade shows, according to CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group that sponsors the event.

So expectations were high. But the Droid, with all its iPhone-slaying hoopla, finished the GadgetFest competition in a dead-heat with EcoDog, a local cleantech startup that trotted out Fido—a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill. The GadgetFest judges ultimately proclaimed EcoDog this year’s best in show after the Vista, CA-based company received perceptibly more-boisterous applause from the audience in the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

At the end of the show, while the judges were deciding how to resolve the tie, one of the moderators asked EcoDog founder and CEO Ron Pitt if he had anything more to say. He replied, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

So what are the up and coming gadgets that got previewed at GadgetFest? Here’s a rundown, just in time for the Christmas shopping season:

—TelCentris, the San Diego-based provider of unified communications services, presented an update to its VoxOx system, which aggregates voice over Internet technology, text messaging, instant messaging, serial conferencing, file sharing, and e-mail onto one user interface. As TelCentris executives explained to me in July, the company makes most …Next Page »

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Konarka Technologies, the Lowell, MA-based developer of flexible materials that convert light into electricity, is showing how everyday items like handbags and umbrellas can be turned into power generators. But the eight-year-old firm will need to collect a lot more juice before it can become a commercial success.

The company—which has raised $150 million from private investors—has revealed at least five new partners or customers over the past year who are integrating the firm’s so-called “Power Plastic” into such products as handbags that store solar energy to recharge electronic devices and patio umbrellas that provide electricity for laptops and the like. The latest deal was an agreement revealed last week in which Enviromena Power Solutions, of the United Arab Emirates, is evaluating the materials for use in shade structures used in deserts. And last month the firm hit the one-year anniversary of the opening of its 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in New Bedford, MA. Yet many of the products into which its solar materials are being integrated remain in development, and actual production activities haven’t gone into full swing in New Bedford.

Konarka makes photovoltaic modules from organic polymers rather than silicon or other traditional semiconductors, putting it on the cutting edge of solar cell development. Its materials are unusual in the solar business because they’re not marketed for use in standard solar panels on roofs, which typically are made from cheaper, more efficient substances, such as polycrystalline silicon. The firm’s products, however, are lightweight and flexible enough to be used on the outer surfaces of products such as bags and canopies and umbrellas.

Still, the jury is out about whether the appeal of such products will be powerful enough to convert privately held Konarka into a profitable business. There’s a continuous effort at the company to make its organic photovoltaics more efficient at converting light into electricity and to make them last longer than the current shelf life of three to five years. Meantime, the company’s West Coast rival, El Monte, CA-based startup Solarmer Energy, says that it has developed the most efficient organic solar cells in the world. And industry reports indicate that multi-national corporations with deeper pockets than Konarka and Solarmer have entered the fray in developing organic photovoltaics.

“Long-shot is a very good word for” companies like Konarka and Solarmer, said Johanna Schmidtke, an analyst for Lux Research, which recently completed a report that described all the leading developers of organic photovoltaics (sometimes called OPVs) as long-shots for success. “Whether or not they succeed in the long term is still …Next Page »

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The Fifth Conference on Clean Energy, one of the biggest events of the year for New England energy and cleantech entrepreneurs, is coming up November 12 and 13 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. For the second year in a row, I worked with the organizers of the conference—the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition—to produce a podcast previewing some of the themes that will be featured prominently at the event, ranging from the state of energy investing to the role of stimulus funding for energy startups, the Obama Administration’s performance so far on energy policy, and the significance of A123Systems’ recent IPO for other energy startups hoping to go public.

My guests for the podcast were Jon Karlen, a general partner at venture firm Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston, and Russ Landon, a managing director in the Boston office of Canaccord Adams, a research and investing firm.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button on the widget below, or you can download it and listen to it on your computer or mobile player.

I’d like to thank Jon and Russ for taking the time to speak with me, as well as the conference organizers for inviting me to host the podcast once again. Thanks also to Suzanne Moran and her crew at Lois Paul & Partners for setting up the recording session and producing and hosting the podcast. You can see Lois Paul’s blog post about the podcast here.

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To a large extent, the story of San Diego-based Networkfleet is also an intriguing tale about co-founder Diego Borrego. The privately held company, which currently has more than 100 employees, is one of the nation’s largest providers of technology and services for monitoring the location and status of company-owned vehicles.

Borrego, a Mexican-American who says his first language was Spanish, helped start the company in 1999, quit when he realized he had lost his ownership stake, and rejoined Networkfleet before the business entered a period of double-digit growth. The 42-year-old engineer says his name is on about 10 of 30 patents issued so far to the 10-year-old company.

While wireless fleet management systems are what my Xconomy colleagues politely refer to as “mature” technologies (as opposed to our usual focus on the sweet spot of emerging tech), Networkfleet maintains that not all fleet management systems are alike. Many systems simply use global positioning satellite technology to monitor the locations of company-owned vehicles. Networkfleet’s technology also helps customers reduce their fleet operating costs and vehicle emissions by using the computerized sensors in every vehicle to monitor the vehicle’s performance and engine efficiency.

Diego Borrego

“There are processors now that control the brakes, the engine, transmission, airbags,” says Borrego, Networkfleet’s vice president of engineering. “There’s a rich set of information that we call diagnostics.” He views the technology as more of an IT challenge, because nowadays there is essentially a local area network (LAN) in every new car and truck that links together an average of 25 different computers. “Extracting that data from the vehicle, and somehow transmitting it (in conjunction with GPS) and turning it into information that can be used by fleet vehicle managers is the innovation,” Borrego says.

Networkfleet provides its Web-based service to customers that range from plumbing companies with 10 trucks to the state of Delaware, which operates more than 2,400 government vehicles. Networkfleet installs a piece of hardware that connects to the LAN in every vehicle, gathers information about the vehicle’s operation and transmits the data via cellular links to a data center operated by Networkfleet. Each customer’s fleet manager is given a login to Networkfleet’s website, where he or she can monitor the location of the company’s vehicles. Data about each fleet also can be converted into reports that fleet managers can use to schedule maintenance, optimize operations, and monitor driver behavior.

The company generated about $30 million in sales last year, a 45 percent gain in revenue growth over 2007 that made Networkfleet the second-largest company in the business (based on number of subscribers), according to Keith Schneider, Networkfleet’s president. (The largest is Trimble, a Sunnyvale, CA-based GPS technology company that acquired rival @Road in 2006 for $496 million.) Schneider says many of their competitors tend to specialize in narrow segments of the technology-based business, such as GPS-based vehicle location, advanced routing applications, and workforce management—and he sees the technologies converging. “The industry is poised for massive consolidation,” Schneider says.

The Networkfleet president indicated during our conversation that Networkfleet, which has been owned by the New York private equity firm Apollo Management since 2006, aims to take an active role in that consolidation.

Still, Networkfleet has taken a winding road to get this far—after beginning more than a decade ago on a strategy that came …Next Page »

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Craig Mundie is a geek, and I mean that in the best possible way. Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, the 17-year veteran of Redmond, WA, still talks like an engineer, throwing out terms like “heterogeneous machine architectures,” “GUIs” (graphical user interfaces), and “clouds and clients” like there’s no tomorrow. It’s kind of refreshing, given that he is in charge of setting the long-term agenda for one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

Mundie is in the midst of a weeklong tour of some top universities around the country. He called me yesterday from Cambridge, MA, where he had just finished a presentation to Harvard University students, faculty, and guests. He visits the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (my alma mater) today, and comes to Kane Hall at the University of Washington tomorrow afternoon. It’s similar to the college tours Bill Gates used to do.

From what I can tell, the goal is to stir up interest in computer science, give audiences a glimpse of future computing systems as Microsoft sees them, and stimulate discussions about how these technologies can help solve some pressing global problems. (You can read more about Mundie’s tour and demos in this Seattle Times story.)

Besides hearing Mundie’s thoughts on computer science education and the future of computing, I wanted to drill down and ask him about the challenge of taking on Microsoft’s strategy development (after Gates stepped down last year) in the most difficult economic times in recent memory. I also wanted to ask him about the deeper culture of Microsoft, the renewed role of research in the company’s future, and the importance of nurturing relationships around the world—and his secret ally in that quest.

Here are some edited highlights from our conversation:

Xconomy: What are you trying to get across to university audiences on this tour?

Craig Mundie: In these presentations, I’m trying to get them to think not only about how computing evolves, but with that evolution, what kinds of problems will become approachable, and what are the new methods? Several things are evolving in parallel [and leading to more heterogeneous and complex machines]. That begets the requirement of how to do programming around parallel computing. With very high-scale computing facilities, the cloud and the client come together to form one system that people will program. They will use those things together with new display and sensing technologies.

Just as the GUI revolutionized computing, we could see a similar revolution with more natural interactions with machines, rather than just “type and point and click.” That will expand the number of people who can interact with computers. With the diversity, rooms can become computers [for instance]. You won’t think of them so much as a computer.

X: What are some of the global problems you think advanced computing will help solve?

CM: Beyond the computer science realm, I’ve talked about energy and the environment. I show one piece of research work we’re doing to compose computational models, a simplified climate model, at Princeton and Microsoft Research. It shows linkages between deforestation in the Amazon and atmospheric temperatures around the rest of the world. If you were a policy person, these kinds of things would give you tools to support your decision making.

In energy, we’re doing computer modeling and direct visualizations. I showed a model, loaned to us from TerraPower [the nuclear power firm spun off from Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures …Next Page »

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It’s not that I thought Vermont and New Hampshire were technological backwaters, because I knew from my years of working in Boston that the local venture capitalists were pumping millions of dollars into startups in the two northern New England states. But what I’ve found over the past year or so of living in both Vermont and the Boston area is that the only thing that really separates the startups in Kendall Square from those in Barre, VT, and Lebanon, NH, is that the former are way closer to good seafood. The level of innovation and sophistication among the entrepreneurs in both camps is pretty much equal.

While attending a business and innovation event called Vermont 3.0 in Burlington, VT, last week, I thought it would be fun and interesting to take a look back at all the northern New England innovation I’ve covered over the past year. Indeed, a perk of working north of the Massachusetts border is that I’ve visited the laboratories and research facilities of many exciting startups up here. I’ve had a chance to visit with faculty and researchers affiliated with innovation hubs such as Dartmouth College, Middlebury College, and the University of Vermont. I’ve also talked shop with venture capitalists at firms such as Borealis Ventures, based in Hanover, NH, and FreshTracks Capital in Shelburne, VT.

What follows are summaries of the northern innovation stories I’ve written for Xconomy in the order in which they were published. For each story description I dug into my notes and tried add something that wasn’t in the original piece (but I’m not one to withhold interesting details from my posts, so the supply of previously unreported material was a bit thin).

My plan is to dig deeper into the pockets of innovation north of Boston over the next year. But make no mistake, the majority of my stories will still emanate from the Hub.

—In northern New England, there are no technology clusters as dense as those found in Boston, but I found an emerging innovation cluster in Dartmouth College and environs earlier this year. My trip to Dartmouth in February resulted in a post about the key labs, people, and concerns that contribute to the startup ecosystem there. (I also learned that parking is as difficult to find on the Dartmouth main campus as anywhere in Cambridge, MA.)

—People may assume startups in New Hampshire operate in small buildings nestled in the woods, and in the case of Lebanon-based antibody discovery firm Adimab, those people would be right. I met the founder and CEO, Tillman Gerngross, at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center, an incubator that hosts Adimab and other firms with ties to Dartmouth College. Gerngross, an engineering professor at Dartmouth, pointed out that a firm called GlycoFi that he co-founded and sold to Whitehouse Station, NJ-based drug giant Merck (NYSE:MRK) in 2006 was operating in separate labs in the same building.

—One of the first stops that startups make to find money in Hanover is Borealis Ventures. Borealis has done well investing in Dartmouth spinouts; its investment in GlycoFi alone made its first fund a big success, firm co-founder and managing director Phil Ferneau told me during a meeting. While there are many angel investors in New Hampshire, Borealis may be the only venture capital firm in the state. So, as you’d imagine, Ferneau and his partners are very popular among entrepreneurs in the state.

—After meeting with Gerngross and Ferneau, I wondered what exactly was under the hood at GlycoFi that would persuade Merck to maintain its operations in New Hampshire. It turned out that GlycoFi’s technology—which involves the use of bioengineered yeast to produce human proteins with lower structural variability than mammalian cell lines typically yield—is a centerpiece of Merck’s recent strategy to develop copies of biotech drugs. And many of the scientists who are developing the GlycoFi platform still reside in northern New England.

—Apparently, I’m not the only Boston-area innovation junkie who’s working in Vermont. John Danner, the CEO of Northern Power Systems in Barre, VT, told me during a meeting at his office that his primary residence is still in Massachusetts even though he spends most of his weeks in the Green Mountain State. Danner, a former engineer aboard nuclear submarines, is now engineering a turnaround at the Vermont-based wind turbine manufacturer. (The latest on Northern Power is that it’s aiming to …Next Page »

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Boston, MA-based First Wind said today that Harvard University has contracted to purchase half of the power generated by its Stetson II wind project in Maine. First Wind is expected to break ground on the project, an extension of its existing wind farm in Stetson Hill near Danforth, ME, this month. The 15-year contract could supply Harvard’s Cambridge and Allston campuses, which consume nearly 250 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, with up to 10 percent of their power needs, the company said, making it the biggest wind-power consumer of any New England university or college.

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San Diego’s tech sector got some money and glory during a week that was overshadowed by news from two life science conferences: TEDMED and the annual Biocom Investor Conference. Get your tech news now while it’s still hot.

—To stay connected with open-source development for smart phones, San Diego’s Qualcomm created a subsidiary, the Qualcomm Innovation Center, that is focused on making sure the chipmaker’s technology works smoothly with Android, Symbian, and other open-source wireless platforms. Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) also joined the Symbian Foundation and is supporting the open source systems used by Nokia and others.

—One of the big selling points for algae-based fuels is that algae absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide before it gets harvested and turned into biofuels. Yet San Diego-based Sapphire Energy and other algae biofuel companies say they are having a hard time getting enough carbon dioxide at an affordable price to support their research and development efforts.

—Federal stimulus funds will help cover almost half the cost of a new $60 million wireless communications system that San Diego Gas & Electric is developing as part of its smart grid program. The $28.1 million grant is part of $3.4 billion to be allocated nationwide.

—Carlsbad CA-based Verdezyne, which is applying advanced biotechnology tools to the development of industrial chemicals and biofuels, raised nearly $3 million of a planned $15.2 million round of venture capital.

—JMI Equity, the venture firm based in San Diego and Baltimore, led a $5 million investment in Axeda, the Waltham, MA-based startup that makes a cloud-based system for wireless tracking of company assets. Axeda also raised $4 million in venture debt from MMV Financial of Toronto.

—TechAmerica San Diego, the local chapter of the industry group previously known as the AeA, issued nine awards at its 16th annual high tech awards luncheon. The group named winners in nine categories: MadCap Software (Software); InterKnowlogy (Internet); Verari Systems (Hardware); Quake Global (Communications); SeaBotix Inc. (Defense); Peregrine Semiconductor (Integrated Circuits); OneRecovery (Medical Device) IPS Group (Cleantech); Legend Films (Emerging Growth).

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It seems like every few days since Labor Day weekend we at Xconomy get invited to attend or cover an entrepreneurship competition. This is a good thing. It means there are more and more opportunities for innovators in New England to gain exposure to the business community and investors—as well as a chance to win some cash and other prizes to help get their ventures off to a strong start.

Indeed, many startups in the Boston area have cut their teeth in the business plan competition circuit before raising rounds of venture capital or achieving other milestones. Take some of the past winners of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition: Cambridge, MA-based video game developer Harmonix Music Systems, creator of the hugely popular Guitar Hero franchise, and the dental imaging firm Brontes Technologies, which was acquired by 3M for $95 million three years ago. And Wilbraham, MA-based FloDesign, which won both the $200K MIT Clean Energy Prize and $100K Ignite Clean Energy competition last year, recently learned that it has been tentatively awarded $8.3 million from the U.S. government to advance development of its next-generation design for wind turbines.

There will no doubt be many more successful startups to emerge from entrepreneurship contests in the region in the years ahead. Some of these contests have been around for years. Others are brand new. But even for those that have been around for a while, schedules and prizes can change from year to year. So we thought it would be a good idea to round them up in one place with the latest information about them we could find.

So whether you’re an investor interested in new companies or an innovator searching for opportunities to transform your ideas or inventions into a startup, here is a list—not a ranking—of entrepreneurship competitions in New England that cater to ideas for businesses in the life sciences, clean-tech, and IT sectors. (Please note that the information came from the contest websites or organizers, and in all but one case I didn’t separate cash from in-kind services factored into the value of each prize):

—Babson College business plan competitions

Babson College holds annual business plan competitions for undergraduate and graduate students. In fact, this year the Massachusetts business college held its 22nd competition for graduate students, making it one of the oldest business plan contests in the state.

Undergraduate Track:

Deadline: Dates for the 2010 competition weren’t available online, but last year the deadline for entries was in winter and the finals were in spring.

Top prize: $5,000 (2009)

Graduate Track:

Deadline: Not dates specified for 2010 competition.

Top prize: $20,000 (2009) …Next Page »

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How does $300,000 an hour sound? Walking away with $5,000 for his 60-second pitch, the winner of Thursday night’s MIT $100K Elevator Pitch Contest (EPC), Rouzbeh Shahsavari, seemed pretty excited about it. His idea? Nanoengineered concrete that is twice as strong, cuts CO2 emissions in half, and is dramatically cheaper than typical concrete.

The EPC is the first of three contests that comprise the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. It will be followed by the Executive Summary Contest and the Business Plan Contest. Now in its third year, the EPC is growing at an incredible rate. With over 350 registrations, we had more submissions this year than in the previous two years combined. As for its capacity to produce innovative ideas, just ask Riccardo Signorelli, the winner of last year’s EPC. Last week the Department of Energy awarded his company, Cambridge, MA-based FastCAP Systems, a $5.3 million grant to develop nanotechnology-enhanced batteries.

As an organizer of this year’s EPC, the experience has been pretty incredible. I distinctly remember how much energy I felt in the room during our kickoff meeting, and things seemed to take off from there. I was repeatedly amazed at the amount of work and energy that my peers put into organizing the events. All of that work finally came together at the finale show Thursday night (for a taste of that energy, see the crowd shot below and the small photo gallery at the end of this post).

The finale really does have a lot theatrics to it. With ”Space” as this year’s theme, the emcees were dressed as astronauts against the background of a giant spaceship made out of PVC pipe (This is MIT after all, what else would you expect?). Audience members clapped thunder-sticks together and shouted “3, 2, 1, Liftoff!” before each presentation. In addition to the pitches, the show featured an interview with the winner of last year’s BPC, Waseem Daher. When asked about the interview experience, he said: “Being a speaker was a lot of fun—it was definitely strange being on the ‘other side’ so soon, because I definitely still see myself in the shoes of the participants…taking a bold new idea—in our case, rebootless software updates—and making the case for it to everyone who is willing to listen (and some who aren’t).”

The format of the event kept the excitement level pretty high as well. The top 10 finalists from each of six tracks (Energy, Life Science, Development, Mobile, Web/IT, and Products & Services) were announced before hand and asked to be in attendance. Of those 60, the top 2 from each track would then deliver their elevator pitch to the audience and judges. However, the finalists didn’t know who they were until their name was announced and they were called down to give their pitch then and there.

During the preliminary rounds I was mainly out front at the registration desk, so I didn’t get a chance to preview many of the pitches. Seeing them at the finale, I was astounded by …Next Page »

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