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Archive for August, 2012

DOE funds 19 next-gen battery projects with $43M

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, cleantech, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Startups, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

The Department of Energy’s program that gives grants to early-stage energy projects — called ARPA-E — has allocated another $43 million for 19 battery projects, including grants for futuristic batteries made of new chemical mixes, using brand new architectures and utilizing nanotechnology. The ARPA-E program has been aggressively funding next-generation battery technologies over the years, and though these are small grants, the amount of innovation happening is substantial.

The funds go to projects that are very early stage, and are supposed to help bring disruptive R&D closer to commercialization. While Japanese and Korean conglomerates dominate the industry of producing small format lithium ion batteries for laptops and cell phones, these next-gen batteries are mostly targeted for electric cars and the power grid. Some of these projects also aren’t strictly traditional batteries, and a couple are flow batteries, which are large tanks of chemicals that flow into a containerized system and provide energy storage for the power grid (see Primus Power’s flow battery pictured).

Notable winners of the funds include big companies like Ford, GE, and Eaton, small startups like Khosla Ventures-backed Pellion, and projects out of the labs of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Here’s some of the winners (for the full list of 19 go here):

  • Ford: $3.13 million for a very precise battery testing device that can improve forecasting of battery-life.
  • GE Global Research: $3.13 million for sensors thin-film sensors that can detect and monitor temperature and surface pressure for each cell within a battery pack.
  • Eaton: $2.50 million for a system that optimizes the power and operation of hybrid electric vehicles.
  • Pellion Technologies: $2.50 million for the startup’s long range battery for electric vehicles.
  • Sila Nanotechnologies: $1.73 million for the startup’s lithium ion electric car battery that it says has double the capacity of current lithium ion batteries.
  • Xilectric: $1.73 million to “reinvent Thomas Edison’s battery chemistries for today’s electric vehicles.”
  • Energy Storage Systems: $1.73 million for a flow battery for the grid, with an electrolyte made of low cost iron, and using a next-gen cell design.
  • Battelle Memorial Institute: $600K for a sensor to monitor the internal environment of a lithium-ion battery in real-time.

Read more here.

 

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Private Equity Assets Hit Record $3 Trillion

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on August 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from CNBC.

The value of assets managed by the private equity industry globally continued to rise last year, hitting a record $3 trillion despite financial market turmoil and sluggish economic conditions.

The results will provide a boost to the private equity industry which has been struggling with difficult conditions for raising new funds, a slump in deal making activity and heightened public scrutiny following the US presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who ran Bain Capital before turning to politics.

Despite the increased criticism, the private equity industry has continued to attract assets from investors such as pension funds seeking investment returns to meet their obligations.

In November, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas said that it would hand $6 billion to private equity group’s KKR and Apollo Global to manage. The cash is to be invested in buyouts, as well as other funds run by the asset managers, such as those investing in corporate debt.

Earlier this year Blackstone proved that it was still possible to raise mega-funds, as it completed a $16 billion fundraising that began in January 2011 to launch the sixth largest fund on record, according to Prequin.

Research by Prequin published Monday showed the industry’s assets under management rose by 9.4 percent, down slightly from last year’s 11.9 percent but the second highest year of growth since 2007.

“The sustained growth of industry assets highlights the fact that private equity continues to be attractive to institutional investors that are willing to forgo liquidity in return for outperformance,” said Bronwyn Williams of Prequin. “ Despite the uncertainty and volatility that has prevailed in recent years, faith remains that private equity fund managers can still deliver these returns.”

Private equity returns annualised over 10 years to 2011 outpaced the S&P 500 and MSCI Europe indices.

The rate of growth of assets remains, however, well below the 33.6 percent and 37.6 percent rates registered when the private equity market was still booming in 2007 and 2006, respectively.

Other industry observers are less bullish, believing the increasing asset values simply show the time lag before private equity funds come to the end of their lives. Moreover many funds are being forced to hold on to assets longer than they would normally before selling them.

The number of private equity funds still active shrank for the first time in 2011, according to private equity fund advisers Triago, who added in a report in March that the number of casualties in the private equity fund world are likely to rise dramatically from 2015 as poorly performing portfolios of investments from the height of the credit bubble come to the end of their lives.

The Prequin findings also highlighted a widening gulf between the best and worst performing funds. “The key issue for investors remains identifying, researching and selecting the best potential fund managers for their portfolios,” said Ms Williams.

Read more here.

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