At 61 years old Fisk remains as passionate about architecture and the environment as he was as a student at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s. There he got master’s degrees in architecture and landscape architecture under the tutelage of the legendary Ian McHarg. After completing his studies he taught “ecological design” in the School of Architecture at University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s and became known for a field lab where he and his students built windmills, raised organic vegetables, and designed buildings using local materials. In 1975 Fisk turned his lab into a nonprofit organization called the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems and left the university to “cause commotion” full time.

For the past 30 years the center has developed a four-pronged approach, emphasizing design, master planning, policy and education, and tools (which include educational games and the creation and testing of building materials). Fisk and his wife, Gail Vittori, who joined the team in the late 1970s and is now codirector, have set up solar hot water heater production for poor towns in South Texas, planned sustainable villages in Nicaragua and China, and created several dozen building materials. In the early 1990s the pair also helped to create Austin’s city-sponsored green building ratings program–the first of its kind in the world and a model for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. (Vittori currently sits on that organization’s board of directors.) “Our idea was to extend the Austin program from just considering energy conservation and performance to looking at the total flows of inputs and outputs to a building,” she says.

These days Fisk has added a new building system to the center’s repertoire. The GroHome–part of a broader program Fisk calls “Community-Supported Architecture”–was conceived of as a way to offer residents the flexibility to expand their living space with minimal impact to the site, the local landfill, and residents’ daily lives. The construction is based on a series of joints that can be used to erect a variety of structures, from simple lampposts to large meeting halls. Another component of the system is the FatWall, a thick wall that can be cantilevered off the sides of a GroHome or positioned inside the frame for closet space, a home office, or even a bathroom.

Like many Fisk projects, the GroHome embodies more than just a single principle. It’s one element of an integrated system that includes sustainable thinking on a broad and integrated level. “If you look at the GroHome from a planning perspective, you can take the joint all the way up to the region so that you have a sensible way of understanding your footprint,” Fisk says. Indeed the standards within the joints–which Fisk dubs GroJoints–can accept pipe, conduit, dimensional lumber, bamboo, and many other structural members so that builders can adapt and use whatever is locally available. Any given GroHome then becomes a source of information about the region. “As part of a master plan, a building system becomes a way of communicating,” Fisk says. “Manufacturers can understand how a system works so they can cooperate with each other. It’s also an effective way to inventory resources.”

Fisk has always maintained that for a building or a city to be sustainable it must be created from the resources available in its region as well as contribute to the local economy. His contract work for the Environmental Protection Agency in the mid 1990s crystallized this idea (see “The Infinite Grid,” by Andrea Moed, Metropolis, December 1996). At the time Fisk was asked to create a grid map of the country on which he pinpointed natural resource availability, businesses that were distributing those resources, and people who were knowledgeable on how to use the materials; he called these groups area, point, and network resources. By integrating this information, Fisk says, it’s possible to track the economic resources that go into harvesting and transporting a material. It also allows one to see where materials are used and how they’re recycled (or not) after their initial use–a process now widely known as life-cycle analysis.

Currently Fisk and Vittori are in discussions with grassroots organizations in Louisiana and Mississippi about building GroHome communities for displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors. In a sense this represents the culmination of 30 years of work. The GroHome is a technical fix for a housing need, but the larger initiative is a planning opportunity that can involve residents in the rebuilding, provide local jobs, and teach neighborhood businesses about the benefits of green building. “Bucky Fuller said that we’re all born geniuses, and we’re gradually de-geniused by our parents and teachers,” says Bob Berkebile, principal of BNIM Architects in Kansas City. “Pliny wasn’t de-geniused–he never lost the curiosity for lifelong learning.”

 “This is an important milestone for GM – and a critical step in bringing the Chevrolet Volt to market,” said GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre.

GM announced last August a $43-million investment to prepare the 160,000-square-foot, landfill-free facility for production of lithium-ion battery packs for the Volt and other electric vehicles with extended-range capabilities. The plant is part of a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Motors called GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC.

In just five months, the Brownstown plant was converted from an empty facility to a production-ready battery manufacturing site. New machinery and specialized equipment have been installed and three primary assembly areas have been completed: battery module pre-assembly, final assembly and the battery pack main line.

The Volt’s battery pack is made up of multiple linked battery modules and more than 200 battery cells. The initial assembly area is where the prismatic-shaped cells are processed and installed by state-of-the-art flexible automated equipment into modules, which are then delivered to the battery pack main line.

The battery pack main line area features an Automated Guided Cart (ACG) system that includes operations for thermal and electrical assembly, along with quality and dimensional checks. The main line is also where battery pack final testing, verification and packaging for shipment take place.  

Initial battery production at Brownstown will be used to validate the plant’s equipment and processes, and batteries will be sent to GM’s Global Battery Systems lab in Warren, Mich., for testing. This spring, GM will begin shipping batteries to GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant, the assembly location for the Volt, for use in production validation vehicles.

Regular production at Brownstown and Detroit-Hamtramck is set to begin in the fourth quarter.

GM is investing $700 million in eight Michigan facilities for Volt-related production, including $336 million in the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which will benefit from battery research conducted at the battery lab in Warren; receive batteries from Brownstown; use tooling from Grand Blanc; take delivery of camshafts and connecting rods from Bay City; and dies, stampings and the Volt’s 1.4L engine-generator from three plants in Flint.

“The development of electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt is creating entire new sectors in the auto industry – an ‘ecosystem’ of battery developers and recyclers, builders of home and commercial charging stations, electric motor suppliers and much more,” Whitacre said. “These companies and universities are creating new jobs in Michigan and across the U.S. – green jobs – and they’re doing it by developing new technology, establishing new manufacturing capability, and strengthening America’s long-term competitiveness.”

In August, the U.S. Dept. of Energy selected 45 companies, universities and organizations, including GM, in 28 states for more than $2 billion in awards for electric drive and battery manufacturing and transportation electrification. Nearly half of that total is designated for cell, battery and materials manufacturing facilities in Michigan.

The Volt is an electric vehicle with extended-range capability. It is designed to drive up to 40 miles on electricity without using gasoline or producing tailpipe emissions. When the Volt’s lithium-ion battery is depleted of energy, a flex-fuel engine-generator seamlessly operates to extend the total driving range to about 300 miles before refueling or stopping to recharge the battery. Pricing has not been announced.

All of these companies have been working out of the limelight for a while now — infrastructure isn’t as sexy as the cars themselves. Coulomb has quietly been installing its ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations one city at a time in North America and Europe. These machines, small enough to be bolted to a roadside street lamp, pump up to 240 volts of AC power or 500 volts of DC power, juicing up drivers’ batteries quickly while they’re on the go — all they have to do is swipe a ChargePoint card, just like a debit card.

But Coulomb says 2010 will be its breakout year, with plans to roll out thousands of new stations across many cities, and to establish footholds in Asia and South America. The recent funding, led by Voyager Capital and Rho Ventures, and including Siemens Venture Capital and Hartford Ventures, should give it the boost it needs to make this happen.

In addition to installing stations in one municipality at a time, the Campbell, Calif., company is also forging partnerships with companies who will make the technology available in their parking lots. Perhaps the biggest boon in this area was the deal with McDonalds to make charging stations accessible for fast food diners with plug-in vehicles. The company also counts Dell, Reliant Energy, DTE Energy and Element Hotels among its strategic partners. In all, it provides charging stations to 120 clients, including cities.

The funding is yet another sign that electric vehicle infrastructure is finally attracting the attention it deserves. For a while, EV makers and enthusiasts alike have been wondering how wide adoption of these cars will occur without the necessary charging and fueling infrastructure already existing in the field. Last year, Coulomb snagged $3.8 million in a first round of funding. The fact that its latest fund-raise tripled this amount is an extremely positive indicator of investor interest.

Now that infrastructure companies are starting to get the resources they need, it will be interesting to watch how competition between them plays out. Better Place, which is also pursuing a similar charging station concept, has focused a lot recently on battery-switching stations, where drivers could swap out depleted batteries for fully-charged models at designated points. This solution is intended to address charging wait times, which could still exceed a half hour with Coulomb’s stations. No would one want to wait a half hour at a gas station, is the thinking.

There is also hydrogen fuel cells to consider. With Toyota, Daimler, General Motors and Honda all working on hydrogen-powered cars, these models could present formidable competition for EVs. SunHydro, a startup planning to use solar energy to generate the hydrogen for fueling stations, seems to have a feasible, affordable plan. How much of the market will it carve out?

Estag Capital provided Coulomb’s first round of funding last year.

By  Camille Ricketts

PHOENIX, Jan 28, 2010 — BUSINESS WIRE

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today recognized ECOtality, Inc. (OTCBB: ETLE), and its wholly owned subsidiary, eTec (Electric Engineering Transportation Corporation), for the company’s work toward establishing robust electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the United States. Secretary Chu made his remarks at the Washington Auto Show in Washington, D.C. today during a news conference to announce financing that will enhance U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing.

“eTec is working on the largest EV infrastructure deployment in the world, and we are working very closely to get EVs on the road,” said Secretary Chu. “We need charging stations and infrastructure – it is very important.”

Secretary Chu announced that the Department of Energy has closed a $1.4 billion loan agreement with Nissan North America, Inc. The loan will support the modification of Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn., manufacturing plant to produce the Nissan LEAF, a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle, and the lithium-ion battery packs to power them.

In August 2009, ECOtality’s subsidiary, eTec, was awarded a federal stimulus grant of nearly $100 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The grant is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), with the goal of creating thousands of new jobs, preserving existing jobs and jump-starting the economy.

The $100 million DOE grant is facilitating The EV Project, the largest rollout of electric vehicle infrastructure in the United States. With a match from project partners, The EV Project has a total value of more than $200 million, and will support electric vehicles with home-base, commercial and public chargers in major markets in five states: Arizona (Phoenix & Tucson areas), Washington (Seattle area), Oregon (Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene), California (San Diego) and Tennessee.

eTec President and CEO Don Karner attended the announcement as a guest of Secretary Chu. Karner said, “The EV Project is paving the way for widespread acceptance of electric vehicles, and we are proud to be working with the Department of Energy to achieve the goal to create jobs and end our dependence on foreign oil.”

For more information about The EV Project, please visit www.theevproject.com.

About ECOtality, Inc.

ECOtality, Inc. (OTCBB:ETLE), headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., is a leader in clean electric transportation and storage technologies. Through innovation, acquisitions and strategic partnerships, ECOtality accelerates the market applicability of advanced electric technologies to replace carbon-based fuels. For more information about ECOtality, Inc., please visit www.ecotality.com.

Yet, Rive considers her the “best mother in the world” and not because she retired at age 45 as a millionaire. “She always supported me in whatever I wanted to do,” Rive says.

That turns out to have been a good choice.

Rive, 32, is now CEO and co-founder of SolarCity, which in three years has grown to become a leading residential solar installer in California, the nation’s largest solar market.

Perhaps more important, California-based SolarCity has emerged as one of the top consumer brands in solar at a time when green is hot and President Obama makes solar and other renewable energy sources front-page news.

Last year, SolarCity helped pioneer a way to bring solar to the masses and remove one of the biggest hurdles to its widespread adoption: costs of $15,000 or more for homeowners to go solar. With a SolarCity residential lease, customers can lease a system at no money down, and in many areas, save 10% to 15% a month on their combined electric and lease-payment bill, SolarCity says.

While other companies offer similar financing options, SolarCity has “created the first brand in solar for consumers,” says Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, an online trade publication. “They were very smart and creative in an industry that had been plodding along.”

On any day in San Francisco, chances are good that you’ll spot a green SolarCity van en route to an installation. The company claims 4,500 residential and commercial customers in California, Arizona and Oregon, including eBay and Intel.

Rive says SolarCity’s revenue will grow 40% this year – despite the recession – and 250% next year, given orders on the books. SolarCity employs 450 and plans to add 180 workers in the next quarter, he says. It also aims to expand to at least five states in the next year. Rive, while not releasing revenue for the privately held SolarCity, says it turned its first profit in the recently finished third quarter.

“Our trajectory is on fire,” Rive says.

That’s not a new phenomenon for him.

At age 17, Rive raked in thousands of dollars a month in his native South Africa as a distributor of natural cosmetics. The business ate up so much time, Rive never went to high school, and faced expulsion. His mother told him to “solve this problem,” Rive says.

Armed with his financial statements, Rive met with the principal, who then agreed to let Rive skip school but take the exams. Rive graduated and never set foot in college.

Still, he was a millionaire at age 30, he says, thanks to the sale of his second company, PC-monitoring firm Everdream, to PC giant Dell in 2007. At age 18, he was able to buy himself a two-seater plane and a ski boat. He now drives an electric Tesla Roadster; retail price: $100,000.

While Rive enjoys the perks of his success, business comes first. Lunch on a recent afternoon amounted to a bagel eaten while the 6-foot-2-inch Rive loped two steps at a time up an escalator to get to a meeting.

“Lyndon is a classic Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” says John Fisher, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which invested in Everdream and SolarCity. “He’s savvy, gutsy, ambitious, fearless and driven.”

Too good to be true?

Rive will need all those attributes in the competitive solar market.

Nationwide, hundreds of solar companies and installers vie for business, especially in SolarCity’s key market, California. Competitors, such as REC Solar, Akeena Solar, GroSolar, SunPower and others, are also building successful brands.

To date, solar provides 1% of the USA’s energy. Despite the push by the Obama administration for more use of renewable energy, many states still lack strong enough incentives and laws to move broad solar adoption, says Matthew Woods, vice president of sales for REC Solar.

Financing and incentives can also be touch-and-go. Earlier this year, some SolarCity customers had to wait six months to get installations done after financing options dried up following last year’s financial market meltdown. SolarCity has since solved that problem with the creation of a $100 million fund by US Bancorp to finance its lease deals, it says. Other companies got caught in the same credit crunch, SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass says.

Still, one of Solar City’s biggest challenges is overcoming homeowner skepticism that its lease deal is too good to be true.

“We hear that a lot,” Rive says. “But we do save you money, and it doesn’t cost you a cent to go solar.”

SolarCity’s leases run for 15 years. The company designs, installs and maintains the system. SolarCity owns the system and gets the accompanying federal tax credits and state incentives. Homeowners pay SolarCity for the lease and the electricity they use. That’s typically about 15% less than their traditional monthly electric bill, SolarCity says.

Lease rates go up each year by up to 3.9%, no matter how much or how little electric rates move. And people who don’t use a lot of electricity aren’t likely to see savings, SolarCity says. In California, for instance, that’s anyone with electric bills under $150 a month.

Given federal tax credits, homeowners with available cash may also do better financially to buy a system, says REC’s Woods. SolarCity, as does REC, also offers outright sales, as well as leases or leaselike options.

But for those without cash or the gumption to maintain their solar systems, leasing is a “pretty good deal,” says Paula Mints, analyst at research firm Navigant Consulting.

The too-good-to-be-true thought crossed the mind of Los Angeles architect Colin Summers, 43.

“It felt a bit like subprime loans,” Summers says. He contacted SolarCity after spotting a Prius blanketed in the SolarCity logo.

Summers signed up for a SolarCity lease for his 2,000-square-foot Santa Monica home last year. The impetus? He likes being green. He loves technology. And his electricity bills had jumped to more than $300 a month.

Summers now pays about $200 a month: $80 for electricity and $120 for the lease. If he sells his home, Summers can transfer the lease to the new homeowner or pay it off.

Given the lure of green living among Santa Monica residents and the financial savings, Summers expects solar to be “more of a selling point than a problem.”

Underwater hockey ’showed drive’

Some big names have bet on Rive and his elder brother, Peter, SolarCity co-founder.

SolarCity has raised $80 million in venture capital funding, including from Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Lyndon Rive was 22 when the venture capital firm first invested in him. One thing that impressed Fisher was Rive’s underwater hockey skill. The sport is played with lead pucks, pushed along the bottom of the pool by short sticks. Players wear fins and snorkels.

At age 18, Rive joined South Africa’s men’s open division team. In 2004 and 2006, he played for the U.S. team. In 1998, he first came to the U.S. as part of the South African team. Shortly thereafter, he sold his South African company and followed a brother to Silicon Valley.

“The notion of playing hockey underwater while holding your breath showed me Rive had extra passion and drive,” Fisher says.

Another SolarCity investor is Elon Musk, co-founder of online payment system PayPal, co-founder of electric carmaker Tesla Motors and CEO of rocket-maker SpaceX.

To say that Musk and Rive go way back is an understatement. Not only are they cousins, but their mothers are twins, and their fathers share the same birthday.

It was on a road trip with Musk to the Burning Man art event in the desert of Nevada that Rive first started thinking of solar.

Musk had invested in Everdream, too, and asked Rive what they were going to do next. Musk tossed out the idea of solar.

Rive and his brother, Peter, who is so green he catches his rainwater, vetted the idea. While technologists at heart, the Everdream co-founders decided the market didn’t need a new solar panel or something else technical as much as it needed a new brand that made adoption easier.

Currently, about 65% of SolarCity’s new residential customers choose to lease vs. buy a system, SolarCity says. The key to SolarCity’s future success, Rive says, is getting every homeowner-customer to feel like a VIP – whether they lease or buy.

“If we can do that, we’ll have a working formula,” he says.

The Japanese automaker is working with Ecotality to bring 11,210 chargers and 4,700 Nissan Leaf electric cars to five states — Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee. Ecotality is getting a big assist from the Department of Energy, which has granted the Arizona company $99.8 million to underwrite The Electric Vehicle Project. Ecotality calls it “the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in history.”

Creating that infrastructure will be a huge challenge, but Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America, tells the Tennessean the company will be ready when the first Leafs (Leaves?) roll into showrooms in December 2010.

“There is a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to do it,” he said. No kidding.

Look for the Nissan Leaf EV late next year. Nissan and Ecotality will, according to the Tennessean, install 220-volt chargers in customers’ homes throughout the state and create public charging stations in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville and along the highways connecting those cities. That sounds like a more ambitious version of the charging corridor SolarCity and Rabobank have created between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Why Tennessee, you ask? Because Nissan North America is based in Franklin. Nissan is investing $1 billion in a factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, that will build lithium-ion battery packs for the Leaf and — beginning in 2012 — the car itself. The Department of Energy has loaned the automaker $1.6 billion to help finance that project. The batteries and cars will be built in Japan until the factory comes on line. Nissan plans to build as many as 150,000 Leafs a year once the factory gets rolling. Tennessee is slated to get 2,190 of the 220-volt “Level 2″ chargers that will recharge a dead battery in eight hours.

Ecotality and Nissan also will install 50 “Level 3″ quick-chargers that reportedly can do the job in as little as 20 minutes, according to the Tennessean. All told, Ecotality says it will deploy 10,950 Level 2 chargers and 260 Level 3 chargers in the five states. When those come on line remains to be seen, and the project could be slowed by building regulations and other bureaucratic hurdles, warned Colin Read, the company’s VP of corporate development. “We could get permission to install a charger in a home in Phoenix in three weeks, for example, but it took six weeks in Scottsdale (Arizona),” Read told the paper. “Our biggest issue is trying to get the red tape out of the way.”

Nissan believes cities might opt to install charging stations in public parking garages and other locations, and it also is talking to WalMart about the possibility of having chargers in the retailer’s parking lots. CostCo also has expressed interest, according to the Tennessean.

 Ecotality and Nisssan have launched a website to provide information about the Leaf, with real-time maps showing where charging stations are located. The site also allows you to suggest locations for charging stations in your community. When we drove a Leaf prototype last spring, Perry told us the cost per mile is 4 cents if you figure gas is 4 bucks a gallon, electricity is 14 cents a kilowatt hour, and you drive 15,000 miles a year. Compare that to the 13 cents a mile you’ll pay in a car that gets 30 mpg. Perry said the car will cost about 90 cents to charge if you plug it in off-peak.