AlwaysOn is excited to announce the 2010 GoingGreen East Top 50 Private Companies. The GGE50 is comprised of companies developing game-changing approaches and disrupting technologies. As we enter a year of uncertain recovery, it is with great anticipation that we present the the second annual GoingGreen East 50. Along with our traditional criteria for selecting our winners-market size, disruptive potential, solid management team, product feasibility, and so on-this year, we asked one crucial question: Will this company experience success no matter what?
In a sector where too many companies have relied on favorable legislation, government subsidies, high energy prices, and even (it seems so long ago) a booming economy, we looked for companies that are likely to succeed even if none of those factors goes their way. The good news? We found them.
Our overall winner, BPL Global, was selected because it offers a solution to utilities that are seeking to upgrade the electric power grid-a massive opportunity and challenge. All over the world, utilities are racing to make the power grid smarter, more secure, more adaptable, and more efficient.
Energy Management, Smart Grid, and Energy Efficiency was one of our top categories, with six winners. Along with BPL Global, companies winning in this category include WiTricity, developing a potentially revolutionary wireless electricity transmission technology, and Renaissance Lighting, with a unique LED lighting solution that uses a reflective cavity to provide highquality, uniform lighting. Another winning company, GreenBytes, lets server operators deduplicate and reduce the footprint of their information storage, which translates directly into significant energy savings.
The choice of winners in the Clean Energy category is a reflection of today's energy reality. We included three cleaner coal innovators-CoalTek, CoaLogix, and Powerspan-and two cleaner petroleum companies-Rive Technology and Electro Petroleum. In our definition of "clean," we incorporate efficiency: These companies are not only developing cleaner ways to use fossil fuel, but ways to more efficiently extract and refine fossil fuel. Other winners in this category reflect the diversity of emerging clean-energy solutions. Persistent Power Systems, for example, is developing a next-generation nuclear power solution, and Northern Power Systems is building gearless wind turbines that deliver best-in-class energy capture, with lower costs for operations and maintenance.
The Solar Energy category has seen recent, dramatic advances in both thermal and photovoltaic technologies, and the progress is just beginning. The next-generation solar companies we recognize as winners are taking the technology further still, as solar energy moves inexorably toward becoming truly cost-competitive with conventional sources of energy. Lightwave Power is developing novel solar energy products based on nanoarrays and two-dimensional plasmonic and photonic crystal arrays. Konarka is developing a non-silicon, photo-reactive polymer material that can be inexpensively printed onto flexible substrates. GreenRay has integrated micro-inverters into its photovoltaic panels, greatly reducing set-up complexity.
Innovations in Resource Recovery and Waste Management continue to be very cost-effective, since waste streams are already in place to be harvested. Water Technology and Treatment includes companies like Oasys that are pioneering novel and inexpensive desalination and energy storage innovations and promising to deliver breakthroughs to a sector as big and as challenging as energy.
Energy Storage Systems also had a strong showing, reflective of the need for devices to buffer and store intermittent power. This category had winners with diverse technologies, including International Battery, FastCAP Systems, and General Compression. Our Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biofuel, and Agriculture winners also had diverse solutions in what is potentially the most disruptive category of all, as we reengineer lifeforms to address opportunities in energy, waste treatment, specialty chemicals, agriculture, and medicine.
The array of technologies, the variety of applications, the allencompassing coverage this year's GGE50 winners offer as they proliferate into every corner of our economy, is a source of great optimism. These winning companies are defined by their durability-their independence of political favors, environmentalist panic, or contrived scarcity-they are competitive with conventional solutions. Greentech will deliver better, faster, cheaper, and cleaner solutions as sustainability becomes synonymous with squanderable abundance, and humanity emerges into an era of universal prosperity on a pristine planet.
The GoingGreen East 50 Winners
Overall Winner: BPL Global
Company Name: BPL Global
Category:Energy Management, Smart Grid, and Energy Efficiency
URL: www.bplglobal.net
Headquarters: Cranberry Township, PA
CEO: Keith Schaefer
Year Founded: 2004
Employees: ca. 130
Investors Include: Al-Deera Holding Company, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, DQE Communications Network Services, International Financial Advisors, International Finance Company, Kuwait Holding Company, Morgan Stanley, Novitas Capital, Nth Power, Perseus, Science Applications International, Siemens Venture Capital, SZAR Partners, Tollgrade Communications
AO Take: BPL Global has emerged as one of the top worldwide providers of enabling tools for the smart electrical grid. Founded in 2005, BPL Global's flagship product, Power SG, incorporates enterpriseclass software for utilities, along with sensors and communications hardware that are installed across the electrical grid from substation to consumer meter. Their systems let a utility centrally manage the grid in a far more energy-efficient manner, by deploying sensors on all devices affecting substation loads-distributed generation, distributed storage, and customer load. Where BPL Global's hardware and software solutions aren't deployed, they interoperate with other solutions, integrating them onto a common platform.
Not only has BPL Global offered one of the first complete solutions of this kind, it has shown impressive execution, growing into a company with offices and sales on five continents-along with its home base in Pittsburgh, PA, the company has regional headquarters in Paris, Kuwait City, and Beijing. BPL Global is now in partnerships with more than 100 utilities, with half its business outside the U.S. In more than 90 of BPL's roughly 100 accounts, the company has already installed transformer monitors and has demand-response management software up and running with a half-dozen clients.
Also positioning BPL Global for rapid future growth are partnerships with IBM, Siemens, and SAIC. These best-of-breed global companies offer BPL unparalleled access to deep resources, helping it incorporate vital additional elements to the solutions it offers utilities, including cyber-security and weather analytics.
BPL Global's technology is supercharging the smart-grid revolution, a sector of cleantech that is as durable as they come-a sector that will grow regardless of whatever seismic shifts may arrive next in the economic and political landscape. The company's technology extends onto devices throughout the evolving electric power grid, from distributed renewables generating intermittent power, to the batteries, flywheels, capacitors, ice, or whatever else stores and buffers power, to the customers themselves. Its software connects them all and offers the utilities perpetual, transparent visibility, with analytical tools that let them efficiently manage electrical loads.
The electric power grid, worldwide, is evolving into a system of unimaginable complexity. BPL Global's solutions provide the means to manage the new system intelligently and efficiently. The company appears to be well-positioned to retain market leadership as this utterly necessary technology is realized all over the world.
Clean Energy (not solar or biofuel)
CoaLogix
CEO: Bill McMahon
Headquarters: Charlotte, NC
CoalTek
CEO: Chris Poirier
Headquarters: Tucker, GA
Electro Petroleum
CEO: Philip Bell
Headquarters: Wayne, PA
Northern Power Systems
CEO: John Danner
Headquarters: Barre, VT
Persistent Power Systems
CEO: Doug Levin
Headquarters: Boston, MA
Powerspan
CEO: Frank Alix
Headquarters: Portsmouth, NH
Rive Technology
CEO: Larry Evans
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
Clean Manufacturing and Clean Products
AtmosAir Solutions
CEO: Steve Levine
Headquarters: Fairfield, CT
Primet Precision Materials
CEO: Lawence Thomas
Headquarters: Ithaca, NY
QD Vision
CEO: Dan Button
Headquarters: Watertown, MA
Energy Management, Smart Grid, and Energy Efficiency
CURRENT Group
CEO: Tom Casey
Headquarters: Germantown, MD
Digital Lumens
CEO: Tom Pincince
Headquarters: Boston, MA
GreenBytes
CEO: Robert Petrocelli
Headquarters: Ashaway, RI
Renaissance Lighting
CEO: Barry Weinbaum
Headquarters: Herndon, VA
WiTricity
CEO: Eric Giler
Headquarters: Watertown, MA
Energy Storage Systems
FastCAP Systems
CEO: Ricardo Signorelli
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
Firefly Energy
CEO: Ed Williams
Headquarters: Peoria, IL
General Compression
CEO: David Marcus
Headquarters: Newton, MA
International Battery
CEO: Ake Almgren
Headquarters: Allentown, PA
Ioxus
CEO: Michael Pentaris
Headquarters: Oneonta, NY
Green Automobiles and Transportation
Levant Power
CEO: Shakeel Avadhany
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
Green Materials and Green Building
Aspen Aerogels
CEO: Don Young
Headquarters: Northborough, MA
DNP Green Technology
CEO: Jean-Francois Huc
Headquarters: Princeton, NJ
Hycrete
CEO: David Rosenberg
Headquarters: Carlstadt, NJ
Innova Materials
CEO: Alexander Mittal
Headquarters: Philadelphia, PA
Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biofuel, and Agriculture
Joule Biotechnologies
CEO: Bill Sims
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
Myriant Technologies
CEO: Stephen Gatto
Headquarters: Quincy, MA
Novomer
CEO: Jim Mahoney
Headquarters: Waltham, MA
PurposeEnergy
CEO: Eric Fitch
Headquarters: Arlington, MA
Segetis
CEO: Atul Thakrar
Headquarters: Golden Valley, MN
Resource Recovery and Waste Management
Harvest Power
CEO: Paul Sellew
Headquarters: Waltham, MA
KGRA Energy
CEO: Jason Gold
Headquarters: Short Hills, NJ
PMC Bio Tech
CEO: Frank Sinton
Headquarters: Exton, PA
Recycled Energy Development
CEO: Sean Casten
Headquarters: Westmont, IL
Rentricity
CEO: Frank Zammataro
Headquarters: New York, NY
Ze-Gen
CEO: Bill Davis
Headquarters: Boston, MA
Solary Energy
GreenRay
CEO: Miles Russell
Headquarters: Westford, MA
Konarka
CEO: Rick Hess
Headquarters: Lowell, MA
Lightwave Power
CEO: Lawrence Kaufman
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
Petra Solar
CEO: Shihab Kuran
Headquarters: Plainfield, NJ
SolarEdge
CEO: Guy Sella
Headquarters: Hod Hasharon, Israel
Solasta
CEO: Mike Clary
Headquarters: Newton, MA
Suniva
CEO: Ajeet Rohatgi
Headquarters: Norcross, GA
Water Technology and Treatment
Aqua-Pure Ventures
CEO: Jacob Halldorson
Headquarters: Calgary, Alb., Canada
BlackGold Biofuels
CEO: Emily Landsburg
Headquarters: Philadelphia, PA
Clean Membranes
CEO: Jean-Marc Pandraud
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
EnviroTower
CEO: Paul Wickberg
Headquarters: Toronto, Ont. Canada
In-Pipe Technology
CEO: John Williams
Headquarters: Wheaton, IL
Oasys Water
CEO: Aaron Mandell
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
