Alphabet Energy was a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

founded in 2009 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

thermoelectrics Thermoelectric materials show the thermoelectric effect in a strong or convenient form. The ''thermoelectric effect'' refers to phenomena by which either a temperature difference creates an electric potential or an electric current creates a t ...

expert Matthew L. Scullin and Peidong Yang. The company uses

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...

and materials science applications to create thermoelectric generators that are more cost effective than previous bismuth telluride-based devices. The company is based in

Hayward, California Hayward () is a city located in Alameda County, California in the East Bay subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of 162,954 as of 2020, Hayward is the sixth largest city in the Bay Area and the third largest in Alameda Cou ...

. It started with a license to use

silicon nanowire Silicon nanowires, also referred to as SiNWs, are a type of semiconductor nanowire most often formed from a silicon precursor by etching of a solid or through catalyzed growth from a vapor or liquid phase. Such nanowires have promising applications ...

developed at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

. They moved from UC Berkeley to offices in San Francisco in 2011, and later to Hayward. Alphabet has a number of

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

related to the capture of

waste heat Waste heat is heat that is produced by a machine, or other process that uses energy, as a byproduct of doing work. All such processes give off some waste heat as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. Waste heat has lower utilit ...

for purposes of electricity generation. The company is working with

tetrahedrite Tetrahedrite is a copper antimony sulfosalt mineral with formula: . It is the antimony endmember of the continuous solid solution series with arsenic-bearing tennantite. Pure endmembers of the series are seldom if ever seen in nature. Of the t ...

, a common mineral with thermoelectric properties. 2011's '' The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses'' describes Alphabet Energy's approach to product development as an example of the successful practice of the book's principles. Author

Eric Ries Eric Ries (born September 22, 1978) is an American entrepreneur, blogger, and author of ''The Lean Startup'', a book on the lean startup movement. He is also the author of ''The Startup Way'', a book on modern entrepreneurial management. Early ...

is on Alphabet's advisory board. Alphabet has raised over $35 million in venture capital funding from Claremont Creek,

TPG Capital TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American investment company based in Fort Worth, Texas. The private equity firm is focused on leveraged buyouts and growth capital. TPG manages investment funds in growth c ...

Encana Ovintiv Inc. is a hydrocarbon exploration and production company organized in Delaware and headquartered in Denver, United States. It was founded and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, under its previous name Encana. It was the largest energy c ...

and the California Clean Energy Fund. They were chosen as a 2014

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

Technology Pioneer and as a 2015 IHS

CERAWeek CERAWeek is an annual energy conference organized by the information and insights company IHS Markit in Houston, Texas. The conference provides a platform for discussion on a range of energy-related topics; CERAWeek 2019 featured sessions on the w ...

Energy Innovation Pioneer. Alphabet Energy ceased operation on 2018 Aug. 1st. The company’s name, based on the word

alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whi ...

, comes from its use as a term for a

Seebeck coefficient The Seebeck coefficient (also known as thermopower, thermoelectric power, and thermoelectric sensitivity) of a material is a measure of the magnitude of an induced thermoelectric voltage in response to a temperature difference across that material ...

, and has no relation to the Google holding company,

Alphabet Inc Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and s ...

Products

In 2014, Alphabet Energy introduced the world’s first industrial-scale thermoelectric generator, the E1. The E1 takes exhaust heat from large industrial engines and turns it into electricity. The result is an engine that needs less fuel to deliver the same power. The E1 is optimized for engines up to 1,400 kW, and works on any engine or exhaust source, currently generating up to 25 kWe on a standard 1,000 kW engine. The E1's modules are interchangeable but currently come with a low-cost proprietary thermoelectric material and the device is rated for a 10-year life span. As advances in thermoelectric materials are made, new modules can be swapped in for old ones, to continually improve fuel efficiency to as much as 10%.

High temperature heat-to-electricity conversion

In 2017 Alphabet Energy, with a $2-million grant from the

California Energy Commission The California Energy Commission, formally the Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, is the primary energy policy and planning agency for California. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission'core respon ...

(CEC), has been partnering with Berkeley Lab "to create a cost-effective thermoelectric

waste heat recovery A waste heat recovery unit (WHRU) is an energy recovery heat exchanger that transfers heat from process outputs at high temperature to another part of the process for some purpose, usually increased efficiency. The WHRU is a tool involved in cogen ...

system to reduce both energy use in the industrial sector and electricity-related carbon emissions." The goal is a prototype with 10+ percent efficiency, operating temperatures beyond the 400 degree Celsius limit up to 800 degrees, possible remote electricity generation for areas off the grid, and "modularization for a broad scale of..applications" unique at various locations.

References

{{reflist

External links

Company websiteCompany video at YouTube (posted by company)E1 Thermoelectric Generator video at YouTube (posted by company)IHS Energy CERAWeek interview with CEO, Dr. Matthew L. Scullin video at YouTube (posted by company)PowerModule video at YouTube (posted by company)Fortune article: A startup is finally bringing heat-to-power tech in a big way for vehicles (posted by company)
Nanotechnology companies Companies based in Hayward, California Technology companies established in 2009 2009 establishments in California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Electric power in the United States Thermoelectricity University of California, Berkeley Defunct technology companies of the United States Technology companies disestablished in 2018 2018 disestablishments in California