Alphabet Energy was a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

founded in 2009 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

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

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

applications to create

thermoelectric generator A thermoelectric generator (TEG), also called a Seebeck generator, is a solid state device that converts heat (driven by temperature differences) directly into electrical energy through a phenomenon called the '' Seebeck effect'' (a form of the ...

s 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, United States, 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 ...

. 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, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

. 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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

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 utility ...

for purposes of electricity generation. The company is working with tetrahedrite, 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 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 private equity firm based in Fort Worth, Texas. TPG manages investment funds in growth capital, venture capital, public equity, and debt investments. The firm in ...

, Encana 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 organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

Technology Pioneer and as a 2015 IHS

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

Energy Innovation Pioneer. In 2016, Schlumberger Ltd. led a $23.5 million round to help the company expand production of its Power Generating Combustor (PGC) system, which helps to reduce the impact of natural gas flaring. Alphabet, whose investors also have included Encana Corp., said Schlumberger participated with GM Ventures, and others. Alphabet Energy ceased operation on 2018 Aug. 1st, and was sold to Synergy Fuels. The company’s name, based on the word

alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) 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'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

, 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. Alphabet is the world's third-largest technology company by revenue, after Amazon and Apple, the largest techno ...

., as it was founded before Google adopted the Alphabet moniker.

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%. Later on, the company introduced what would become its flagship product, the Power Generating Combustor (PGC). The PGC system is designed to eliminate the need for diesel- and natural gas-powered generators and electrical grid connections at oil and gas well pads to reduce fuel, rental and maintenance costs, and to eliminate emissions. Alphabet opened a Houston office to keep pace with energy industry demand for remote power generation solutions.

High temperature heat-to-electricity conversion

In 2017 Alphabet Energy, with a $2-million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC), has been partnering with Berkeley Lab "to create a cost-effective thermoelectric waste heat recovery 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

External links

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Company 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 semiconductor companies of the United States Technology companies disestablished in 2018 2018 disestablishments in California Defunct energy companies of the United States