Plasma-based Lighting Revisited

I received an email reply back from a Geoff Brown over the weekend in response to my inquiry about Luxium’s product line which was very informative. He sent some proprietary material which I will go over in my ENTR200 classes tomorrow (2/10/09). Included in his email was this statement:  Your reference of the REMC was very helpful.  One of the companies that is being very innovative and proactive with our lamps is Stray Light Optical Technologies.  The principal there is Gerald Rea, and he is working with the REMC on solutions using solid state plasma lighting and highly efficient lighting fixtures.  He will contact you and has offered to show you some of his implementations of Luxim LIFI light sources.

Turns out, Stray Light Optical Technologies is located in Scottsburg, Indiana, some 148 miles south of Purdue between Indy & Louisville. Their web site of a     “just the facts” type, shows the two principals, Gerald Rea and Robert Drake to be Rose-Hulman graduates (I won’t hold this against them) with backgrounds in   Optical/ME, and ME/CS/Biomed/Spanish with work experience in an incubator setting and Cook Pharmica in Bloomington, IN. It appears to be a young startup company.

So just down the road from us, R&D is taking place in the commercialization of plasma-based lighting which very likely will, or can be modified to, meet the immediate needs of farmers and their somewhat unique barnyard lighting requirements. Moral of this story boys and girls – seek and you shall find. Heads up Steve. Hank

Discovery Park Elevator Pitch Registration is OPEN

Entrepreneurship @ PRP 2/19/09

Have A Happy Friday: Grins From Church

Societal Impact of The Mobile Web

About the World Economic Forum: Entrepreneurship in the global public interest

Why you should watch this about hour long discussion @ the recent World Economic Forum: Chad Hurley (YouTube), Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Shananu Narayen (Adobe), Hamid Akhvan (T-Mobile) and Eric Clemmons (Wharton) discuss the mobile web and the potential societal impact of sharing where you are and what you are doing with others.

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests. The World Economic Forum is under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Government. [From "about" here:] Hank

Wind Power + Insurance = Opportunity

As many of you are aware of, Wind Mills producing electricity are starting to
sprout up north of Purdue. Great. However, some/many of the private owners of
these wind farms would like to be able to sell back to the grid/REMCs excessive
capacity. To do so, they need to tie into the grid. Herein lies the challenge.
Indiana REMCs in general are leery of independent sources of electricity feeding back
into their lines from a lineman-safety viewpoint. They “know” when their own
inputs have been disabled for maintenance/repair jobs, but not wind farms
feeding their grid. They are requiring large amounts of “insurance” from
potential wind farm owners which isn’t typically available as part of a home
owner’s policy. The insurance companies don’t seem to want much of the business
in this area either, although this is commonplace in California both from wind
and solar. All of this positions the REMCs as being a roadblock to deployment of
renewable energy in the area – not a good position.

Interestingly, nothing is required of owners who have installed
generator-based backup systems in case of power outages, which are frequent
enough in this area (rural – our power goes down many times a year for hours on
end). You’d think local insurance companies would see this as an opportunity to
charge somewhat of a  premium for this coverage. It’s time for everyone to get
on board that we are not in a business as usual mode in these challenging times.
You know, the REMCs could get into the insurance business also, as well at the
state, feds……… Hank

Next Revolution: Energy

Last week I was part of a strategy planning session for Service Concepts, LLC, the coop of 28 of 39 REMCs in the State of Indiana. The facilitator, a guy named Tim Hosey, made an interesting observation which is fleshed  out here.

Thousands of years ago humans moved out of caves, and evolved beyond hunter/gathers. The agriculture revolution came about, and with it,  “currency” often was barter. This lasted for hundreds of years, and is often cited as from 1750 until 1900. Machines really got their start in the 1800s when the US started laying down railroad tracks leading us into the Industrial Revolution. Evolving in parallel during this period was the rise of banks, bankers, and the use of paper money for transactions. In many of the readers of this blog’s lifetime, the Information Revolution took off and all things digital came into widespread use for commerce. We digitally place orders, are billed for them, and pay for them purely via digital means. Nothing physical is exchanged during modern day transaction. The currency is digital; furthermore, all that we are is digital. Think Obama’s pledge to digitize all insurance/health/pill records, i.e, your very DNA.

Tim suggested we are at the nascent stage of movement to the Energy Revolution. Terminology such as “cap and trade” has entered our working vocabularies. We easily discuss “carbon credits” without so much as blinking an eye. It might seem to be a stretch, but it appears we are moving to a currency based on trading some measure of energy, be it therms, BTUs, or lack thereof. Obviously, this exchange may well be supported by digits of one form or another, but ENERGY is the thing of value potentially being the basis of future commerce.

OPEC nations realize their black gold will not last forever and are supporting alternative energy initiatives within their sand pits. The train, aka The Energy Revolution is coming. Entrepreneurs must position themselves to take advantage of this revolution like none in the past.

Mike Cassidy, who teaches another section of ENTR200 and is the founder/CEO of  FortressStrategyGroup suggests consideration of the following types of questions: “This is a threat to established governments (they like their currencies and power), established providers, banks, the money industries, etc. How will these PESTEL players and competitors play the game (partner, collaborate, thwart, etc)? What sources of new “power” will emerge (political, industrial, etc.) and what threat or opportunities will they present to the world? ….Will we be better or worse off in the new Energy Economy?”

In private correspondence, Tim Hosey suggests what new driving principles emerge in this energy revolution is of increasing concern to current ENERGY PLAYERS. He suggests the Information and Energy Ages will run side-by-side in some disruptive manner in the short run. Heads are being scratched over what this will be.

What say you? Hank

Plasma-based Lights

At the Service Concepts strategy planning session I attended last Wednesday, one of the board members strongly advocated moving the farming community toward the use of LED lighting in place of conventional barnyard lighting. He sited a roughly halving of the cost of barnyard lighting to farmers as the reason [not saving electricity BTW.]   CFLs widely coming into general use don’t provide the required lumens for coverage of an area as large as a barnyard. So the problem as stated is the cost of illuminating large areas, not the saving of Energy as I prefer to look at the situation. Obviously this is another “problem.” But back to today’s blog subject.

At the same meeting, a “new” lighting source, the plasma-based light was mentioned in passing. is a VC-backed, Silicon Valley-based relatively new firm bringing plasma-based lighting to market. Originally commercialized as theater-lighting, and the light source for projection TVs, they are moving the technology toward more common household and commercial apps, like barnyards, gyms, parking lots, and highways. Their web site is here, and an intro YouTube video is here. Plasma-based lighting is a potentially disruptive technology which will jump over LEDs in certain applications – such as barnyard lighting.

Luxim is in competition with emergent LED technologies such as what Luminus and Optoelectronix offer. Even in the current economy, VCs are investing millions in such companies. Hank

The Cars We Drove

Click on the link here for a very nicely done multimedia presentation centered on cars of the 50s and 60s. There is money in nostalgia. [Picture December 1957 my 1950 Lincoln Coupe.] Hank