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All Power Labs

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Overview

All Power Labs (APL) is a renewable energy company based in Berkeley, California. APL designs and manufactures biomass gasifiers and builds and markets small-scale (15 kW - 150 kW) electrical generators fueled by these gasifiers. In 2013, All Power Labs posted sales of approximately $5 million, reaching an installed base of 500 machines in approximately 40 countries.[1] As of 2015, APL employed 30 staff, including engineering, manufacturing, management, sales, and technical support staff, on the site of the former Shipyard, an approximately 20,000 sq.ft. facility that includes APL’s offices, R&D, manufacturing and production facilities.[2] In 2015 it established a board of directors to which it added Daniel Kammen and Tom Dinwoodie.[3]

History

Jim Mason and Jessica Hobbs founded APL in 2007 on the site of, and based on, the work of the former Shipyard. The Shipyard was a collaborative art-development space established in 2001 by Mason in a dozen shipping-container workspaces assembled around a small machine shop in West Berkeley. Containers were rented out to a mix of artists, engineers and scientists he selected mostly from among his collaborators on art projects for the Burning Man festival.[4] Unable to get approval for a grid-power connection due to zoning issues,[3] the Shipyard community assembled an off-grid power system combining 2 kW of used photovoltaic panels, a 4000 amp hour surplus telecommunication battery bank, a pair of used diesel generators running on biodiesel made in an on-site biodiesel-reactor facility, and began experimenting with Biomass Gasification as a potential power source.[5][6]

APL's initial goal was education and experimentation in open-source alternative energy technologies in an attempt to create a do-it-yourself (DIY) power-hacking culture. Within the first year, the company limited its focus to the open-source development of biomass gasification technology,[5] and began to design and manufacture a range of open-source DIY Gasifier Experimenters Kits (GEK), whose plans and cad files were made available online.[1]

Products

In 2010, APL began to manufacture an integrated biomass gasifier-genset named the Power Pallet in 10 kW and 20 kW ratings. By the end of 2013 the GEK kits and 10 kW version were abandoned along with the company's open-source ethos with its release of a 20 kW unit using a proprietary gasifier design based on Mason’s patents.[2] In late 2015, the company’s only products were the PP20 Power Pallet 20 kW biomass genset[7] and the proprietary version of the GEK Gasifier without any of the electrical generation components, as well as some optional accessories. A principal segment of their market is directed at addressing energy poverty in the developing world.[3][6] In 2015, using a California Energy Commission (CEC) grant intended to incentivize forest-fire remediation in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, APL continued development of a 150 kW version of a shipping-container-based genset named the Powertainer[8] that was initially built as a 100 kW rated prototype in 2012 with the assistance of a US Department of Energy grant.[9]

Operation

Biomass Gasification uses high temperatures in an low-oxygen environment to covert woody feedstocks into a Syngas fuel composed predominantly of flammable hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO) gases. When waste biomass is used as the feedstock and the biochar byproduct is sequestered, such as when used as a soil amendment, the operation results in Negative carbon dioxide emission.[10][3] APL's gasifiers use a variety of lignocellulosic biomass (woody biomass) such as wood chips, nut shells, and other agricultural bi-products as feedstock,[3] at the rate of approximately 1.1kg/kWh.

References

  1. ^ a b Dean, Josh (28 March 2014). "Meet the Radical Berkeley Artist Whose Company is Turning Trash Into Electricity". Fast Company. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  2. ^ a b Fehrenbacher, Katie (4 February 2014). "This Berkeley Startup & its Energy Machines Are About to Take off". Gigaom. Knowingly Inc. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e Baker, David (November 30, 2015). "Their site burns hot – and green". Section D: San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
  4. ^ Brian Doherty (3 September 2007). This Is Burning Man. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-02892-9.
  5. ^ a b Doherty, Brian (May 2008). "Power from the People". reason.com. ReasonFoundation. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  6. ^ a b Duffy, Ryan (21 December 2015). "Now What Episode 10: Trash Powered". Huffington Post.
  7. ^ Terdiman, Daniel (19 October 2013). "Carbon-negative Energy a Reality at Last,-- and Cheap Too". No. US Edition Sci Tech. CBS Interactive. cnet. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  8. ^ Downing, Jim (September 2015). "Following the fuel: How portable biomass energy generation may help rural communites". California Agriculture. 69 (3): 141. Retrieved October 10, 2015.
  9. ^ Voegele, Erin. "Demonstrating Portable Energy: A modular gasification technology produces on-demand, biomass-based syngas". Biomass Magazine. BBI International. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  10. ^ Nguyen, Tuan. "Carbon-Negative Energy Is Here! This Device Makes Clean Energy and Fertilizer". Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
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