Tom Dinwoodie invests in, joins APL Board
Renewable energy pioneer Tom Dinwoodie leads investment round and joins APL Board of Directors. We are thrilled to announce that Tom Dinwoodie, a Bay Area legend in renewable energy, has just joined the APL team, becoming the latest addition to our board of directors. Twenty-five years ago and just one block from the APL headquarters in Berkeley, CA, Tom Dinwoodie founded PowerLight Corporation. He grew PowerLight from a start up to a $250+ million dollar powerhouse that later merged with solar giant SunPower, where he went on to serve as the CTO of SunPower Systems Business. “All Power Labs has……
Return of the GEK
GEK Gasifier, available again after two year hiatus All Power Labs began in 2008 by selling small scale gasifier kits for DIY enthusiasts and university researchers. Our intent was to provide a “LEGO kit” of gasification to spark new work and new conversation in the relatively uneventful field of biomass thermal conversion. Over the following years we were amazed at the interest these kits generated globally, and the acceleration of collaborative research and knowledge exchange that followed. Here’s what the GEK v1 looked like in 2008: We ultimately sold over 300 of these kits before they were eclipsed by our……
Dr. Dan Kammen, Global Energy Access Expert, Joins APL
All Power Labs is delighted to announce that Dr. Dan Kammen has agreed to join APL, as the founding member of our Board of Directors. We are deeply honored by this engagement, as there are few who can match Dr. Kammen’s breadth of experience and expertise in the area of access to renewable energy. As Founding Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Kammen has been a world leader in research to improve energy access, and has traveled widely to see first hand the challenges and opportunities of delivering affordable, reliable, clean……
APL wins $2M grant, and patent, for PowerTainer
All Power Labs Wins $2 Million USD Grant for Powertainer Project Very big news–on January 23rd, All Power Labs won a grant for $2M USD from the California Energy Commission (CEC) to complete commercialization and deployment of the Powertainer. This is a continuation of the work we began several years ago with the University of Minnesota and Cummins Power Engineering, to build a 100kW gasifier, engine, and hopper feed system fully enclosed within a 20′ shipping container. Information and pictures of that project are here. The new funding will enable new design and reliability testing cycles to take the Powertainer……
Today we are pleased to announce a new product: the PC20 Power Cube
Over the last year and a half, APL has been collaborating with partners in Italy to develop a fully enclosed, regulation compliant version of the Power Pallet. The goal with the new machine is to offer a compact and highly automated biomass power and heat solution, requiring minimized install space or onsite construction, and to deploy it at half the price point of comparable systems on the market in Europe. This new Combined Heat and Power (CHP) gasifier system lowers the cost from the current 4€/watt and above, to around 2€/watt. This makes the system broadly relevant and accessible across……
Powerful. High Performance. And now: Patented!
Powerful. High Performance. And now: Patented! Many of you have been following our progress for years, as we’ve worked to advance the development of gasification, and that makes us all the more thrilled to share with you some important news related our Power Pallet. Take a look at this photo of our CEO JIm Mason: He’s holding US Patent 8764857 B2, issued earlier this summer. The US Patent Office, after an exhaustive review, issued this patent for our core design and operational relationships. This affirms that APL’s innovative design and component interaction truly is groundbreaking, which is remarkable if you……
Lighting Liberia on Biomass-grand opening
Lighting Liberia – for $.08 a kilowatt hour Development work is notoriously hard, especially in places struggling to recover from civil unrest. That’s why we’re so pleased to tell you about the latest chapter in our work in Liberia, in partnership with Winrock International and USAID. As you may recall, about a year ago we started a project at the Booker Washington Institute in Kakata, Liberia, to turn eager students into renewable energy experts while providing cheap energy from waste biomass, on a campus thoroughly looted during the civil war. Fast forward to last month, and the barren room in……
Fast Company’s Article on APL
-FastCompany Magazine, discussing APL’s Power Pallet: “The most important and transformative energy product no one has heard of” That’s the headline from a news article about APL that just landed on newstands around the world. APL has been busy for the last five years, so busy we haven’t been talking to the media much. Well, now it seems they’re coming to us. Fast Company magazine, which chronicles the technology and culture of Silicon Valley and the new digital economy, just published a large story about APL–all about our work, how we got started, and where we’re going: From the story: “an……
Announcing the New v.5 GEK Gasifier & Power Pallet
Now with up to 24hr run time, increased reliability and ease of use Today we’re pleased to announce the new v5.0 GEK Gasifier and related Power Pallet. Two years in development, the v5.0 represents a generational change in our core gasifier technology, incorporating all we’ve learned over the last five years of development and deployment. For you, this means a significant advancement in performance, ease of use, and cost of operation/maintenance. All Power Pallets purchased from today forward will incorporate this new generation v5.0 gasifier and related auxiliary components. The original modular GEK architecture has been an extremely powerful……
Malawi Field Report, Microgrids, New Upgrades, and more
Replaceing Diesel with Biomass–making it happen in Malawi The Chelinda Lodge, like many remote eco-resorts, faced enormous costs getting diesel to their location above Nyika ridge. With costs reaching more than $.50 cents USD per kilowatt hour, they could only afford to run their generator four hours a day on diesel. But working in partnership with the group Total Land Care and funded in part by USAID, they recently received a 20kW power pallet. After a ten hour drive overland in the bed of a Hilux pickup, the staff built a block and tackle system and wrangled it……