Author: Jeff St. John

Over the past several years, the term “smart grid” has grown from a buzzword to a working reality. Millions of two-way communicating, digital smart meters have been deployed, distribution grid sensors and control systems are coming online, demand response devices are shedding peak power in homes and businesses, and utilities are tying together the overarching networks and software systems to make them all work. But this is just the start. Pike Research predicts that $200 billion will be invested in smart grid infrastructure around the world in the next five years — a figure that would make the Department of Energy’s $4 billion smart grid stimulus boost look like little more than a down payment.

But there’s still a variety questions that remain unanswered when it comes to just what a next-generation smart grid network will look like. How much bandwidth do utilities need, will utilities want to rent or own the networks, will smart meters continue to play a key role, will the wireless standard WiMAX make a dent in the digital grid, and how much energy data will be needed to stimulate innovation but protect privacy? We’ll be digging into some of these smart grid network issues at our Green:Net conference on April 29 in San Francisco and we’ll hear from execs from Silver Spring Networks, IBM, Cisco, Sprint and Motorola. Here’s 5 points of debate:

1). Bandwidth and Latency: How much bandwidth will be needed? Most of the communications networks being deployed for the smart grid today are based on lower-bandwidth, lower-cost technologies meant to support smart meters. Since most smart meters don’t “talk” to one another that often — they may send back signals only once every 15 minutes or hourly — it’s worth going with lower functionality to save money. Utilities have to get all their infrastructure costs approved by public utility commissions, so they commonly want to spend as little as possible.

But a whole host of smart grid functions could need more robust networks. Controlling switches and breakers on distribution grids requires very low latency and high reliability, while establishing a more data-rich and consistent connection with utility customers could need higher bandwidth. Some utilities are already considering higher-bandwidth options like WiMAX, as well as wide-area WiFi from companies like Tropos Networks. Cellular carriers are also pitching their higher bandwidth 3G and 4G networks to utilities for rent.

2). Rent or Own: Building and owning a network, and renting space on a commercial network, present unique advantages and challenges for utilities. Owning the network gives the utility control and avoids any issue of having to share bandwidth with other telecom customers. In addition regulated utilities also get to earn profits on capital expenses like building their own networks.

On the other hand, renting space on a network allows a utility to avoid the upfront costs of building a network, and also could offer the utility the tech advances that the large telecoms can deliver. Phone companies have been working hard to develop utility-friendly contracts, and vendors like SmartSynch have built businesses around delivering smart grid communications over cellular networks.

3). WiMAX Smart Grid: WiMAX is the high-speed wireless technology that’s been taken up by Sprint (s) and Clearwire as an alternative to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology being developed by the other major cellular carriers. It’s an open standard with products being developed by big vendors including General Electric, Motorola and Intel that can be deployed in utility-owned networks. Utilities experimenting with WiMAX for smart grid include CenterPoint Energy, National Grid, San Diego Gas & Electric and Consumers Energy.

WiMAX for the smart grid has been getting a lot more attention as of late, courtesy of its chief champion in the industry, San Francisco-based startup Grid Net. In the last six months Grid Net has landed some utility contracts and claimed two coups — an equity investment from Cisco and the hiring of Andres Carvallo, a well-known smart grid executive from Austin Energy, as its new chief strategy officer.

What WiMAX has going against it at present is high cost and low availability. Grid Net CEO Ray Bell previously noted that WiMAX chipsets cost around $36, but he expects that price to fall to about $12 and keep dropping as more are produced. And for any utility that wants to rent space on a public WiMAX network rather than build their own, there’s the question of coverage. In the U.S. Sprint and Clearwire have been slow to roll out their public WiMAX networks, and there were only about 3.9 million subscribers as of late last year.

4). Are Smart Meters The Key? Smart meters — the two-way talking meters that serve as cash register, communications gateway and customer-side sensor device for utilities — have been the public face of the smart grid. The DOE smart grid stimulus program is expected to lead to some 18 million smart meters being installed in the next three years.

But the initial public response to them hasn’t been so good — lawsuits are underway in California and Texas, with customers claiming their new smart meters have caused their electricity bills to skyrocket. The utilities involved say the meters are working properly, but there’s no doubt that the complaints have been a public relations setback.

Beyond the backlash, some smart grid services that smart meters are supposed to one day provide like outage detection to help utilities spot and correct power failures, and voltage monitoring to help grid operators keep power smooth, could be delivered more cheaply and effectively by distribution automation systems. Pike Research estimates distribution automation systems will make up nearly a quarter of global smart grid investment over the next five years.

The most closely watched future functionality for smart meters is as a gateway to home area networks (HANs) that can connect to interfaces or Web portals for homeowners to track and manage their energy use. But much of the usefulness of the consumer-utility connection — such as delivering changing real-time prices to customers — could be hard to do over today’s smart meter networks.

At the same time, telecommunications and cable companies are envisioning home energy networks connected via their own broadband connections, and some startups are looking at ways to leverage home security or entertainment systems to do energy monitoring. All of these factors have likely played into Pike Research’s prediction last year that smart meters would only make up 11 percent of the global smart grid investment predicted over the next 5 years.

5). Balancing Amounts of Energy Data: This week, a who’s who consortium of smart grid startups, investors and corporate heavyweights like Google, GE and Intel sent a letter to President Obama demanding that the federal government make policies to give Americans access to their energy usage data. But opening up smart grid data could also present privacy and security concerns, and utilities and regulators are worried about the mishaps that might result. Concerns range from putting home energy data in the hands of scammers, telemarketers or overzealous law enforcement officials, to hackers taking down the grid by getting smart meters to malfunction.

Companies like Google have a vested interest in freeing energy data for wider use. The search engine giant is one of many developing a home energy platform that will need utility customer data to work well — Microsoft is another, and there are dozens of startups competing in the same field. Limiting the availability of smart grid data could well put a brake on the innovation that could result from these efforts. But utilities and regulators will be hard-pressed to balance those needs against the very real need to keep the grid reliable — and to keep their customers from losing their privacy.

Images courtesy of JeffersonDavis’ photostream, Firas’ photostream, BobDevlin’s photostream, Somewhat Frank’s photostream, Darwin Bell’s photostream, and alancleaver_2000’s photostream.

When it comes to smart grid data, how much is enough — and how much is too much? That question could pit the IT industry’s hopes to use smart grid data to help people save energy — and make money — against customer privacy and data security advocates worried that the same data could be abused by everyone from criminals to the government. Utilities, regulators and consumers could well be caught in the middle of that argument.

That’s the gist of a discussion last week about smart grid privacy at the California Public Utilities Commission, which is forming policies for how the state’s utilities implement smart grid systems. One of the issues that the CPUC is tackling is how utilities should be required to deliver power usage and pricing data to smart meter-enabled customers. But beyond the technical and cost questions, there’s the looming question of what to do with the data in order to protect utility customers from having their information used against them.

Less Data?

One way to do that is “data minimization,” said Jim Dempsey, Vice President of Public Policy for the Center for Democracy & Technology, which advocates for open Internet policies. In other words, only collect the data you need for specific goals, and keep it for as short a time as possible, to avoid the chances for it being lost or misused.

This and other concepts are part of a broader set of “Fair Information Practice Principles” that Dempsey would like both federal and state smart grid plans to adopt. The National Institute of Standards (NIST), the federal agency putting together a national smart grid plan has said security and privacy is a key concern as well. “These are the questions you have to ask yourself — what information are you collecting, how long will you store it, who will you share it with?” Dempsey said Friday.

But that push to minimize data could fly in contrast to the idea of an open energy information world, in which third parties can develop new tools to help consumers save energy. Both Google and Microsoft are working on opening their home energy management systems to third party developers and a host of startups are working on devices and software that will interact with smart grid data.

Privacy Management

Certain utility customer data used inappropriate ways could lead to that data playing a part in “discriminatory, anti-competitive or illegal uses,” said Karin Hieta, a staff analyst for the Division of Ratepayers Advocates, a state agency. Numerous consumer protection and privacy groups have raised their concerns about potential abuses, such as letting burglars see when household power is off to choose which homes to rob, law enforcement agencies spying on people’s household activities without warrants, or marketers getting ahold of appliance usage data to make unwanted targeted sales pitches.

But setting very specific management and protocols for all sensitive data could help avoid such an unfortunate scenario. Ed Lu, the former astronaut in charge of Google’s PowerMeter program, reiterated Google’s rules in dealing with data in his Friday presentation at the CPUC. First, the customer owns the data and has control over who has access to it, he said. Second, they “know who that data has been shared with,” and third, they can opt out at any time, and can have their data completely erased — “It may take a few minutes, because we back up the data, but we will remove every last bit of it,” he said.

Google is a well-known company and has faced the issue of privacy and data numerous times throughout the years. But what about a third party startup that nobody’s heard of? That raises the question of how to oversee, audit and enforce utility customer data information privacy policies across the board.

Of particular concern is how to keep third parties from turning around and selling that data to fourth, fifth and even more parties down the line, Hieta said. Because the CPUC doesn’t regulate those third parties, it has to use the authority it has over utilities to impose its privacy and security goals, perhaps by requiring any third party to sign a contract with the utility it gets data from, she said.

That might not sit well with utilities. Paul De Martini, Southern California Edison’s vice president of advanced technology, gave a presentation to the CPUC on Friday with a slide that made it clear that SCE would prefer that “utilities have no obligation to monitor, supervise or control” how third parties deal with data customers have approved them to use. Utilities don’t want to be forced to act an an IT firm.

Careful Balance

Just how these kinds of restrictions might be seen by third parties is still an open question. So is the matter of how they might react to the idea that data should be restricted to specific, known purposes, rather than being collected in a wider net in the hopes that future applications will find uses for them. “You have to balance the social need for giving people more tools to conserve energy with all these other needs,” said Michael Terrell, Google’s policy counsel.

Giving consumers as much control as possible over which data they authorize for utilities and third parties to use, as well as informing them as clearly as possible about what’s being done with it, was a common theme during Friday’s discussion. Just how the CPUC will balance these concerns against its desire to put smart grid data to practical use as quickly as possible will be an interesting topic to follow as it develops its energy policy over the coming months.

While federal efforts on this issue are also underway, “There’s no need to wait here for the federal government to act on this question,” Dempsey said. At the national level, US Rep. Edward Markey this week introduced a bill, the Electricity Consumers’ Right to Know Act (or e-KNOW), that would mandate giving Americans “free, timely and secure data about their electricity prices and usage patterns” as part of the National Broadband Plan released by the Federal Communications Commission last week.

But Dempsey said he didn’t believe the e-KNOW bill addresses privacy concerns effectively — and noted that California’s state privacy laws have tended to be more protective of consumers than federal laws.

For more related research check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Smart Meter Security: Not Up To Par

The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Who Owns Your Data in the Cloud?

Image courtesy of woodleywonderworks ‘ photostream Flickr Creative Commons.

There’s a battle looming in California over smart meters and energy prices. Google says the state should require its big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. California’s big three utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — have raised plenty of objections to that deadline, and the California Public Utilities Commission is holding a workshop in San Francisco on Friday to talk about it.

The debate, which could influence smart grid policies across the country, underscores an important difference between the two things Google wants utilities to provide — energy “usage” data versus “pricing information.” Electricity usage is a real thing that can be measured in real time with magnets and wires, either by a smart meter or lots of other devices. Electricity prices, on the other hand, are contrived, during or after the fact, by a convoluted market that has to keep demand and supply perfectly balanced at all times. Delivering pricing data in real time will be challenging for smart meter networks as they’re currently being deployed. So in other words, for utilities, delivering power comes first, figuring out who pays for it (and how much) comes later.

Most utility customers pay steady, regulated rates, and don’t get to see these complex price fluctuations — at least, not yet. But even getting slightly more complex tiered or time-of-use prices to customers through their smart meters could be problematic for current utility networks, given that most smart meter deployments today aren’t set up to handle that. As Lee Krevat, director of smart grid initiatives at San Diego Gas & Electric, put it in an interview this week, “We didn’t put in an Internet to each meter, or broadband to each meter — and ‘real time’ really implies broadband to give near real time pricing data.”

Most smart meter networks, including those being deployed by California’s big utilities, are lower-bandwidth and designed to be read every 15 minutes or hourly, not in real time. While there are ways to get faster or more current price information to homeowners, Krevat doesn’t see such a network being the best, or most cost-effective, way, to do it.

After all, “The rates exist on our Web site. The rate schedule doesn’t change very often,” he said. “Do you want to spend your bandwidth transmitting something that could be figured out at a customer end point based on their consumption data?”

Or, to put it another way, would utility customers support paying for the ability to see pricing data? The customers are the ones who pay for utilities’ smart meter system upgrades through increased rates. That certainly differentiates the utilities’ incentives from Google, which wants usage and pricing data opened to third party systems like its PowerMeter home energy management platform. Google promises PowerMeter will be free, but building a system that can provide it with data may still cost customers in one way or another.

SDG&E is working with Google’s PowerMeter and has about 125 customers testing it out — but right now they’re using day-old energy usage information, and currently PowerMeter doesn’t deliver any real-time pricing information. Eventually, California’s three big utilities plan to turn on their smart meters’ home area network (HAN) connections, but they’re doing a lot of testing first. Krevat said that’s an important first step in designing a system that’s both cheap and effective — “Understanding the model for how the customer wants to use it is the first step,” he said. “Then you can decide the technical solution.”

Ted Reguly, SDG&E’s smart meter program director, said customers mainly want some kind of current bill calculation, as well as some kind of pre-set alert when that monthly tally gets too high. Someday people will want to hook up smart appliances and other in-home energy controls to the smart meter via the HAN. But as SDG&E noted in its comments to the CPUC filed in March, “the Smart Meter system as currently designed requires more than HAN to provide customer access to near real time information on prices.”

Beyond these issues, it will be important to clarify what Google means by “pricing information,” Reguly said. Does Google mean the flat rates homeowners are scheduled to pay, or the actual prices that they end up paying after the bill is finalized? “You might think the cost of electricity is X, but it’s really Y because of bill settlement two or three days later,” he said — and getting the more accurate figures to customers in real time would require utilities to completely overhaul the batch processing-based back-office billing systems they now use.

Andy Tang, PG&E’s smart grid chief, said during a recent energy symposium in Berkeley, Calif. that asking utilities to replace their batch-based systems with real-time systems was “impossible” in such a short timeframe, at least not at costs that regulators would be willing to pass on to customers. Tang also expressed some frustration with Google’s push for deadlines for delivering real-time pricing, given that the federal government is still working on standards for all the smart grid systems to make this possible, he said. As PG&E wrote in its comments to the CPUC, “No amount of cajoling or wishing by one vendor or another that it happen by an arbitrary date can change the need for development of such uniform standards.”

Emerging Standards

Just how those standards will emerge remains to be seen. ZigBee, the wireless technology that’s taken a lead in smart meter-HAN connectivity, is working on a second iteration of its Smart Energy Profile specification for energy data that will include some pricing information, Reguly said. For commercial and industrial customers, open demand response technologies like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s OpenADR or EnerNOC’s PowerTalk, are expected to embed price signals as part of an automated system to turn down devices to help utilities reduce peak loads.

Perhaps broadband could be the solution. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal entity setting smart grid standards, has asked the smart grid industry to comment on whether some or all of the customer’s smart grid connections should come through broadband connections independent of the smart meter. There’s a long list of companies looking at selling energy monitoring gear directly to consumers, either as stand-alone products or bundled with home broadband offerings or security systems. Google is working with utilities and smart meter maker Itron, but is also partnering with in-home energy devices from Energy Inc. and AlertMe with its PowerMeter.

All three California utilities have asked CPUC to avoid any hard deadlines in favor of looser policy guidance. But the issue COULD comE to every state. The Federal Communications Commission’s new U.S. National Broadband Plan includes some strong words for state utility regulators to encourage utilities to deliver real time pricing data to consumers.
To wit:

“States should require electric utilities to provide consumers access to, and control of, their own digital energy information, including real-time information from smart meters and historical consumption, price and bill data over the Internet. If states fail to develop reasonable policies over the next 18 months, Congress should consider national legislation to cover consumer privacy and the accessibility of energy data.”

Just how the CPUC decides to take up Google’s deadline — as well as how it comes to define pricing data in the process — will be closely watched topics in the smart grid industry. Stay tuned for more details later this week.

The rumors of an impending IPO for smart grid networking darling Silver Spring Networks are now…more detailed rumors. The latest comes from Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight, which reported Friday that Silver Spring has picked a banker for an IPO scheduled for mid-2010, and is aiming at a market valuation of $3 billion. Silver Spring spokeswoman Lisa Magnuson declined to comment on the report, which came from an anonymous source who named Jefferies & Co. and Morgan Stanley, co-manager of A123 System’s September IPO, as Silver Spring’s banking picks.

Sounds par for the course, when it comes to alleged details on the most poorly kept secret in cleantech. Bloomberg first hinted at a Silver Spring IPO in August, while reporting that CEO Scott Lang was predicting profitability in the third quarter of 2009 and $200 million in revenues some time this year. But that $3 billion valuation figure is about double the rumored $1.5 billion valuation figure that started floating around after Silver Spring bought home energy web display software developer Greenbox Technologies in September for a rumored $20 million.

Of course, since then, Silver Spring raised an additional $100 million in December, bringing its total VC haul to some $275 million (Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Northgate Capital are among its investors). That puts it in the class of startups that are getting too big to be acquired. (Company representatives often balk at the term “startup” being applied to their company, given that scale of investment, not to mention the fact that it’s been around in one form or another since 1996.)

Silver Spring has also landed a host of utility contracts in an industry that demands its players grow to utility scale. Silver Spring’s radios are inside the majority of the smart meters that are being deployed by PG&E, and Florida Power & Light, Pepco Holdings, and American Electric Power. FPL and Pepco are among utilities that got Department of Energy grants to boost their deployments, boosting the schedule for rolling out Silver Springs’ gear. Other DOE grant-winning customers include Commonwealth Edison and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District — and that’s not to mention the deals the company has in Australia, or the work its doing to use its networking tech for smart grid applications beyond smart meters, such as for the Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative in Texas.

Dow Jones put the company’s backlog at about $800 million. To be sure, a good deal of the company’s most recently landed business is supported by Department of Energy grant funding — and that could expose it to delays and bureaucratic wrangling over that cash, as we reported last week. Still, compared to its emerging peers, Silver Spring is the smart grid startup to beat when it comes to racing to the IPO finish line.

Who will be next to IPO? Investor Steve Westly in May named Silver Spring on a short list of cleantech IPOs he was expecting, along with Solyndra, which filed IPO papers late last year, and Tesla Motors, which filed its IPO papers in late January. Other cleantech startups on investors radar screens include smart grid networking company Trilliant, solar thermal developer BrightSource Energy and LED maker Bridgelux.

Intel and a who’s-who list of VC heavyweights are putting together a little stimulus package of their own — and green technology is high on their wish list. Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced Tuesday that Intel Capital has put together a new $200 million investment fund that is aimed at “key innovation and growth segments such as clean technology, information technology and biotechnology,” and has roped in 24 VC firms — including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners —to invest a total of $3.5 billion over the next two years.

Just how much of that money may be headed towards clean technology, Intel didn’t specify. Intel Capital has invested about $125 million in more than a dozen green startups to date, out of an estimated $6.2 billion invested it has invested in more than a thousand companies over the past two decades. But given that greentech outpaced IT and biotech to claim top spot for venture investment in the third quarter of 2009 — bringing the sector’s 2009 VC haul to some $4.85 billion — it seems likely that Intel and the other partners in this so-called “Invest in America Alliance” will be looking hard at green companies to help them gain returns on their investments.

A sampling of Intel’s green investments to date span the gamut from solar manufacturers and smart grid software and networking startups to companies making more efficient semiconductors and computing products. In January it participated in a $31 million round of funding for thin-film rechargeable battery maker Cymbet. In July it said it had invested $10 million in five startups — demand response aggregator CPower, WiMax-based smart grid networking software vendor Grid Net, home monitoring and energy management provider iControl, Irish electronics manufacturing efficiency specialist Powervation and “hybrid-core computing” developer Convey Computer.

The latter two investments highlight Intel’s ongoing interest in making computing more efficient, whether it be through advanced software or power-efficient semiconductor manufacturing — a task that shares technology with the making of solar cells. Intel led a $50 million round for its own solar spinout, SpectraWatt, in June 2008, and in July 2008 put $12.5 million into Voltaix, which makes chemicals and gases for the chip and solar cell fabrication industry, as well as €24 million (or $37.5 million) into German thin-film solar module maker Sulfurcell.

While Tuesday’s announcement was aimed squarely at the patriotic call of boosting domestic jobs and technology competitiveness, Intel hasn’t limited its greentech investments to America — the company has spread its wealth among green startups over four continents. In October 2008, it announced a $20 million investment into two Chinese companies — thin-film solar module maker Trony Solar and electricity storage maker NP Holdings Ltd. It has also invested in Taiwanese efficient display lighting maker Applied Green Light and Dubai-based home automation maker Pulse Technologies.

President Barack Obama’s $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants announced earlier this morning is aimed squarely at building more of the massive, gigawatt-sized reactors we’re all familiar with. Big nuclear is also the target for $36 billion in loan guarantees that the Obama Adminsitration has proposed for the Department of Energy’s 2011 budget. Still, that same budget request could represent opportunity for the handful of startups venturing into the world of nuclear power, if they can deliver on promises of small-scale, modular reactors, nuclear technologies that fuel themselves, or the long-awaited working model of a fusion power plant.

Take small-scale nuclear plants, which are the target of some $38.8 million in proposed 2011 DOE spending. These are pretty much limited to aircraft carriers and submarines nowadays, but could represent a way for venture capitalists to get in on the nuclear resurgence without spending the billions required for today’s large-scale plants. While experienced nuclear power contractors such as Toshiba and Babcock & Wilcox are working on small scale reactors — as are government labs such as Sandia National Laboratory — so are startups such as NuScale Power and Hyperion Power Generation.

At the same time, companies are researching ways to utilize new fuels for nuclear power, or, in the case of Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, use the fuel normally relegated to waste in today’s fission reactors. And fusion power is being pursued by a handful of startups alongside the government-funded research going on around the world.

Of course, getting into the nuclear power business isn’t like launching a consumer electronics or networking startup. Anyone seeking to commercialize nuclear power technology will face years of testing and certification by government entities such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that means investors will have to be patient. Still, for those willing to wait, here are some of the more intriguing (and well-funded) opportunities out there in the new world of nuclear startups.

NuScale Power: This Corvalis, Ore.-based startup landed $2.65 million from CMEA Capital in September 2008, with the goal of deploying technology developed by DOE and Oregon State University. It wants to make modular, 45-megawatt reactors that can be linked together to generate power at about the same cost — 6 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour — as traditional, larger nuclear plants. Beyond saving money by building in pieces, NuScale’s passive water cooling system is safer than traditional reactors, the company claims. The company has plans to submit its design to the NRC in early 2012, which will begin a multi-year approval process that could see reactors available by late in the decade.

Hyperion Power Generation: This Santa Fe, N.M.-based startup has landed an undisclosed investment from private equity firm Altira Group to commercialize a “fission battery” technology that emerged from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Hyperion Power Module — a self-contained cylinder about the size of a hot tub — promises 70 megawatts of heat and 25 megawatts of steam-driven electricity for about $25 million apiece, and is meant to be buried next to remote communities, military bases, tar sand extraction operations and other power-hungry, hard-to-reach areas.

While it’s still on the hunt for a Series B round of funding, Hyperion has been valued at $100 million by its investors, and has plans to open factories capable of churning out about 4,000 units in the coming years. Of course, like its brethren, Hyperion will face a years-long process of seeking approval from the NRC, but it already has a purported customer —  Romanian investment company TES Group has said it wants to buy six modules when they’re ready.

TerraPower: Think of it as a nuclear reactor that powers itself from its own waste. TerraPower wants to commercialize a “traveling wave nuclear reactor” design that’s been under development since the mid-1990s. The basic idea is to start with enriched uranium — the fuel for today’s nuclear plants — and then utilize the depleted byproduct of the fission process to produce more power. That could lead to a nuclear reactor that doesn’t need to be refueled, or have its waste disposed of.

The startup also has deep Microsoft roots — it’s a spin-off of Intellectual Ventures, the think tank founded by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, and Bill Gates is a principal owner. Those deep-pocket backers could be useful, as TerraPower is looking at about 10 years to demonstrate a working plant, and about 15 years to commercial deployment, according to a presentation from TerraPower President John Gilleland.

General Fusion: Fusion power is the holy grail of nuclear power — enormously powerful and waste-free. And, of course, it’s incredibly difficult to accomplish, and is mostly limited to big, government-funded research projects such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Still, there are startups getting funded to pursue fusion, and one of them is Vancouver’s General Fusion, which has raised some $13.5 million from investors, including Canadian firm Chrysalix Partners to work on “magnetized target fusion.”

The idea is to use hundreds of mechanical pistons to drive a shock wave through a lead-lithium mixture surrounding a plasma of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, fusing them into hydrogen. Nuclear experts say it’s technically feasible, but difficult to accomplish. General Fusion has said hopes to demonstrate a working model in 2013.

Tri-Alpha Energy: This secretive fusion startup reportedly raised $40 million from Venrock Ventures and other investors in 2007 to commercialize technology out of the University of California at Irvine that involves a mixture of hydrogen and boron that “chase” one another in a plasma electric generator, according to a U.C. Irvine report. The company may be set to demonstrate its technology some time this year, according to Greentech Media.

Helion Energy: Another would-be fusion startup is Seattle-based Helion Energy, which said in April that it’s seeking up to $20 million to build a working model of its engine, intended to electromagnetically propel ionized hydrogen to speeds of millions of miles an hour, generating immense amounts of heat. The company is aiming at a full-scale prototype by 2011 or 2012 and a commercial model within a decade, Helion President Philip Wallace said in April.

Image courtesy of Hyperion.