Dallas, TX—October 17, 2011— Sopogy® the world leader in micro concentrated solar power (MicroCSP) technologies, launches SopoHelios™, its next generation, parabolic solar collector today at the Solar Power International Conference in Dallas, Texas.

SopoHelios features Sopogy’s patented, award-winning MicroCSP technology.  MicroCSP uses mirrors and optics to intensify the heat energy from the sun creating thermal energy.  Thermal energy is the fuel for clean, renewable power generation, air conditioning, and process heat.

The new collector is designed for “high heat” temperatures ranging between 50-326 degrees C or 122-620 degrees F which directly address power generation, solar thermal air conditioning and solar process heat applications.  The collector spanning 7.61 meters squared or 82 square feet, reduces the number of collectors required to power a solar electric power field by 33%.

“Requiring fewer collectors reduces engineering and construction costs and speeds up solar field assembly” said Darren T. Kimura, President and CEO of Sopogy, Inc.  “SopoHelios maximizes the efficiency for our solar thermal systems and significantly improves the system paybacks,” he added.

Tested in the hot, lava field deserts of Kona for strength, torsion and durability, SopoHelios features a light-weight core, solar tracking, all-weather stow mode, ease of assembly, low maintenance and the capability to enable local manufacturing.

SopoHelios collectors are scheduled for installation in Kalaeloa Solar One, a five megawatt power plant 15 miles from urban Honolulu.  Kalaeloa Solar One will also feature Sopogy’s proprietary thermal heat storage system.  Storage stabilizes production when cloudy and prolongs energy production after sunset.

About Sopogy
Founded in Hawaii, Sopogy has deployed MicroCSP systems around the world, including Hawaii, California, Texas, Florida, Mexico and Abu Dhabi, with projects underway in Hawaii, Florida, Arizona, Japan, Jordan and Papua New Guinea.  Please visit www.sopogy.com for more information.

SopoHelios MicroCSP Collector by Sopogy

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Media Contact:
Tsurumi Hamasu, PR Specialist

Sopogy, Inc.
thamasu@sopogy.com
808-237-2439

Honolulu, September 26, 2011—Sopogy, the world leader in micro concentrated solar power (MicroCSP), has successfully received certification from the Solar Rating and Certification Corporation (SRCC) in its recently established OG-100 classification for Concentrating Solar Collectors. Sopogy is the first MicroCSP company with utility-scale collectors used in power generation, air conditioning and process heat to receive the certification.

Darren T. Kimura, Sopogy’s CEO and President said, “The SRCC rating enables applications where Sopogy’s technologies are installed to qualify for numerous state solar programs and validates the performance of Sopogy’s collector technology. The SRCC certification confirms that Sopogy’s MicroCSP collectors are built to international standards of excellence, an important factor for clients considering an investment in Concentrating Solar Power.”

Sopogy’s MicroCSP collectors generate utility-scale solar power, air conditioning and process heat at 18 installations around the world.  At 175 pounds or just under 80 kilograms, Sopogy’s collector is the lightest of all SRCC certified concentrating collectors.  Sopogy’s collector efficiency factor is 0.5897, the highest SRCC rating for MicroCSP collectors .

Sopogy’s MicroCSP collector passed all of the SRCC’s third-party laboratory and outdoor tests.  SRCC awarded Sopogy’s concentrating solar collector the OG (Official Guidelines) 100 certification for meeting all durability, safety and thermal performance requirements.  The SRCC is the nation’s independent accreditor established to provide authoritative performance ratings, certifications and standards for solar thermal products.

California, Arizona and other states, require SRCC certification to qualify for rebates and incentives.  The SRCC’s performance tests are conducted in accordance with international standards.

About Sopogy
Sopogy revolutionized solar thermal technology with MicroCSP.  Developing modular collectors less than one-third the size of a traditional concentrated solar power mirror, Sopogy cut the cost of solar thermal energy to a fraction of the cost.  Proprietary storage units stabilize volatile energy production when cloudy and prolong production after sunset.  Sopogy’s thermal energy is the fuel for stable, renewable power generation, air conditioning, and process heat.  Please visit www.sopogy.com for more information.

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Media Contact:
Tsurumi Hamasu, PR Specialist
Sopogy, Inc.
thamasu@sopogy.com
808-237-2439

Sopogy Receives Business Leadership Hawaii 2008 “Innovative Company of the Year” Award

HONOLULU –(Business Wire)– Before 1,000 members of the business community, Sopogy, Inc. was presented the Business Leadership Hawaii (BLH) 2008 “Innovative Company of the Year” Award. The event, which took place at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, honors the best in the business. The Innovative Company of the Year Award recognizes organizations dedicated to developing new approaches to creating products, winning customers, and tackling problems. Sopogy was chosen based on its innovative MicroCSP technologies, used to create Process Heat, Solar Air Conditioning, and Electrical Power, and its commitment to leading Hawaii to a sustainable future and curbing the effects of global climate change.

The 7th annual BLH 2008 awards program is a premier event recognizing leaders in business and non-profits. Finalists were judged by a panel of respected business leaders, many of whom are previous BLH winners. Since its launch in 2002, BLH has recognized more than 160 companies, individuals, and nonprofits. Pacific Business News created BLH to spread the word that Hawaii is a great place to do business because of outstanding and committed leaders.

“The culture of innovation is key to our company’s growth and the development of new products. Sopogy is honored to receive the Business Leadership Hawaii Innovative Company of the Year award,” said Darren T. Kimura, Sopogy Chief Executive Officer.

About Sopogy

Sopogy specializes in MicroCSP solar technologies that bring the economics of large solar energy systems to the industrial, commercial and utility sectors in a smaller, robust and more cost effective package. Please visit www.sopogy.com for more information.

Governor Lingle Presents Innovation Award to SopogyHONOLULU – Governor Linda Lingle today recognized three recipients of the Governor’s Innovation Awards for their ingenuity and commitment to developing creative ways to improve Hawai‘i and help the state meet the challenges of the 21st century.

“Our most recent Innovation Award winners are outstanding examples of the ingenuity and innovation of Hawai‘i residents, businesses and government agencies,” said Governor Lingle.  “They are applying creative ideas and developing new technologies that will transform our economy away from an over-reliance on land development and position Hawai‘i to compete successfully in the global, 21st century marketplace.”

Sopogy, Inc. develops and manufactures renewable energy technology systems, including innovative and affordable solar collectors.  The technology developed by Sopogy can provide the co-generation of electricity, process heat and solar air conditioning from one hybrid system with cost-effective energy storage and power delivery.

“Sopogy, Inc. has accomplished much to advance alternative energy, addressing the important needs of our state and its people” stated Governor Linda Lingle.

“The convergence of Renewable Energy and Innovation is an exciting area where the State of Hawaii has established a leadership position and Sopogy is proud to receive this honor” said Darren T. Kimura, President and CEO.

The Governor’s Innovation Award nominees were evaluated by a 15-member selection panel comprised of industry, education and government representatives statewide.  Nominations were submitted online and were judged on creativity; effectiveness in achieving a goal or purpose; transferability and adoptability by others; and significance in addressing an important local or global issue, problem or opportunity.  The selection committee provided final recommended nominations to Governor Lingle for her selection.

Sopogy is bringing smaller concentrated solar energy systems to the market: Process heat, air conditioning, and power generation.

Dr. Al Yuen of Sopogy presents MicroCSP solar solutions to Google.

Oct 4, 2008
SOPOGY PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Sopogy Corporate Communications

Email: media@sopogy.com

808-237-2324

Subject: Sopogy launches SopoApps 2008 a solar design skills contest for engineers and
announces total of $50,000 in cash prizes.

Portland, OR – Sopogy, Inc., in conjunction with winning the New Product of the Year
Award 2008 for its SopoNova 4.0 technology from the National Society of Professional
Engineers’ (NSPE) announces SopoApps 2008 a design skills contest for engineers.
“SopoApps 2008” or Solar Power Applications is a skills contest for HVAC, Plumbing and
Solar engineers. The contest challenges engineers to design practical installations using
MicroCSP solar technologies in 10 categories including: Process Heating, Thermal Air
Conditioning, Industrial, Commercial, Agriculture, Hospitality, Health Care Power, Water
and Innovation. The contest is designed to help accelerate the adoption and installation of
MicroCSP solar technologies. All designs submitted to the contest will be made opensourced
and posted online at SopoApps.com.

The contest runs through October 1, 2008. Judging will be conducted by an independent panel of industry experts. Key factors in judging include production efficiency, cost, completeness, and best overall design. A reception will be held at Solar Power 2008 in San Diego where the winners will be announced. Top winners in each of the 10 categories will receive $5,000.

“The World needs unique solutions to fight green house gas emissions and MicroCSP
technologies are one of the best weapons in this battle. The technology is reliable, quick to
install and a proven alternative to burning natural gas and oil. We now need the best
engineers to bring MicroCSP technologies to their applications and projects. SopoApps is
designed to do exactly this” said Darren T. Kimura, CEO of Sopogy, Inc.
For more information and details on the contest terms and conditions please visit
www.sopoapps.org

Additional Background on the SopoApps
In the solar thermal industry a key problem behind technology adoption is the lack of
available knowledge in applications engineering. This is an industry that has historically
been extremely fragmented and traditional engineering favors conventional fossil fuel
technologies. With global warming and energy issues now a worldwide problem,
SopoApps is designed to become a community for the World’s best engineers to help build
the future of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning.

Hawaii has become an incubator for all sorts of renewable-energy projects

By JIM CARLTON
June 30, 2008; Page R12
HONOLULU — A state better known for sun and fun is quietly morphing into one of the world’s leading incubators of alternative energy.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is heading up a test venture in Hawaii to turn oil-rich algae into fuel. If the process is found commercially viable, the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate could build algae-processing plants elsewhere.

Ever-Green Energy LLC of St. Paul, Minn., plans to build a plant in Honolulu that uses seawater to cool office buildings; if successful, the project will be expanded to other states. A start-up company, meanwhile, is deploying miniature solar-thermal collectors on Oahu to help generate more power for the local electricity grid. This set-up, too, if successful, will be reproduced elsewhere.

The reason for all the interest: location, location, location.

“Hawaii is the only place in the world where you have access to every form of renewable energy, and you are on the dollar and the U.S. legal system,” says Joelle Simonpietri, a former venture capitalist who now heads an algae-to-fuel firm called Kuehnle AgroSystems Inc.

Hawaii is trying to convert to clean energy as fast as it can. Petroleum imports make up about 80% of the energy supply for Hawaii’s main utility, leaving the state among those hardest hit by the run-up in oil prices. Electricity rates have gone through the roof. The average residential rate on Oahu, where most of Hawaii’s 1.2 million residents live, had doubled to 25.50 cents a kilowatt hour — the highest in the U.S. — from 12.74 cents in 1999, according to Hawaiian Electric Co., the state’s major utility.

So, in January, Gov. Linda Lingle announced plans under a state-federal partnership for Hawaii to derive 70% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 — one of the most ambitious targets in the world.

The state has gotten a head start toward this goal in some places. On Maui, for example, wind farms power 11,000 homes, or about 10% of that island’s energy, while on the Big Island, which is Hawaii itself, geothermal power from volcanic vents accounts for about a fifth of the energy there.

And on Oahu, Hawaiian Electric is building a new power plant that will generate 110 megawatts — enough power for about 30,000 homes — and will run completely on biodiesel fuel. The $160 million plant, expected to open next year, will initially get its fuel from imported palm oil.

“Everything is possible as oil prices rise,” says Henry Montgomery, chief executive of MontPac Outsourcing, a finance and accounting consultancy in Honolulu.

Not all the technologies are problem free. Environmentalists want to make sure, for example, that Hawaiian Electric doesn’t import any of its palm oil from endangered rainforests in Asia. Utility officials say that their palm oil will come from sustainable sources, and that over time the plant will rely more on crops grown in Hawaii.

There’s also a question of whether the sources of energy can overcome technical hurdles, among other challenges.

Gov. Lingle, for her part, says Hawaii is counting on a multitude of the clean-energy technologies to succeed — not any particular one. “If our experience with petroleum has taught us anything, it is not to get reliant on any one source of energy,” the governor said in a recent interview at her state capital office, where, moments earlier, the power went down due to a temporary malfunction.

Here is a sampling of what’s going on in Hawaii:

SOLAR

One of Hawaii’s most abundant resources is its sunshine. But like many places, solar power used to cost so much more than conventional power it largely wasn’t economical — until oil prices got so high.

Now, several solar companies in Hawaii are trying to cash in on the boom in clean-energy demand. Hoku Scientific Inc. until last year specialized in making fuel cells. Now the Honolulu company makes silicon for photovoltaic solar cells at a factory in Idaho, while in Hawaii it installs solar panels for mostly corporate customers including the Bank of Hawaii and Hawaiian Electric. “Obviously, with the high electric rates, Hawaii is a great place to sell alternative energy,” says Darryl Nakamoto, Hoku’s chief financial officer.

Another company, Sopogy Inc., is augmenting local power with solar-thermal energy, a technology that uses mirrors and lenses to concentrate the sun’s rays on fluids, creating steam that turns turbines to generate electricity. Spun off last year from a technology company called Energy Industries, Sopogy has created a miniature version of the giant solar collectors found in places like the California desert. “Micro” collectors weigh about 100 pounds, measure 12 feet by five feet, and can be deployed on building rooftops, Sopogy officials say. Also, unlike many technologies that tap the sun, Sopogy has designed its system so it can store solar energy, the company says.

Last year, Sopogy got $10 million in state revenue bonds to set up a one-megawatt demonstration farm on Hawaii. In May, the state Legislature approved $35 million in bonds to help Sopogy build a solar plant on Oahu that will generate 10 megawatts, or enough power for about 3,000 homes, for Hawaiian Electric. Privately held Sopogy has raised more than $10 million in other money as well, including from Kolohala Ventures, a Honolulu venture-capital firm.

If successful, Sopogy hopes to expand its micro solar plants around the world. “We want to see our revenues at $1 billion in five years,” says Darren Kimura, president and chief executive of Sopogy, and founder of Energy Industries.

ALGAE

One of the holy grails in alternative energy is a system that can extrude oil from algae on a grand, and economical, scale. Scientists say oil represents as much as half the body weight of algae, compared with about 20% for corn, one of the most widely used biofuel crops. Algae also grows as much as 10 times faster than corn, and can be processed for oil without disrupting food supplies.

RENEWABLE SOURCES A seawater cooling project for downtown Honolulu would be similar to an Enwave Energy project in Toronto (top left); Ormat Technologies’ geothermal plant in Puna (top right); Darren Kimura, president and CEO of Sopogy, a solar-thermal energy firm; and a diagram of a deep-water cooling system.
However, the technical challenges have proven large in the past. For example, studies have shown algae strains that can produce the most energy often need to be starved of nutrients, which stunts their growth. Indeed, some previous efforts in the U.S. and Japan over the past 30 years have been dropped, in part, because costs were exorbitant.

But now that oil is so high, several companies are turning to algae again. One of the more closely watched is Cellana, a Shell-led venture with a University of Hawaii spin-off, HR Biopetroleum. The companies announced in November 2007 that the venture would build a pilot facility on the Big Island’s Kona coast. Since then, researchers have been busy planting various strains of algae in test tubes that sit in the warm sea water on the Kona coast. One of the tasks facing them is to find algae that both contains the highest amounts of oil and can grow in warm water. “We’re in the process of whittling down the top super bugs from hundreds to 10,” says Susan Brown, a University of Hawaii researcher who collects specimens for the project on scuba dives around local waters.

SEAWATER

One of the simplest clean-energy concepts is to take cool water from the ocean or a lake and use it to help air-condition buildings in nearby cities. The technique has been used in places like Amsterdam and Toronto, with significant power savings.

But piping water to where it needs to go requires more capital investment than many places were willing to make when oil was cheaper. Until recent years, there were also limitations on how deep pipes could be put to suck up the colder water.

In 2003, David Rezachek — a former manager of Hawaii’s alternative energy program — held a workshop in Honolulu to revive local interest in seawater air-conditioning. Even then, Hawaii’s electric rates were the highest in the country. “I said, ‘It’s time to quit talking about it, let’s do this thing,’” Mr. Rezachek recalls.

He helped get Ever-Green Energy — then called Market Street Energy — to set up a subsidiary called Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning. The company invested about $3.5 million in the venture, while $10.8 million has been raised from mainland and Hawaiian investors, including Kolohala Ventures, says Mr. Rezachek, associate development director for Honolulu Seawater. The state Legislature has also authorized $100 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds for a seawater cooling project.

The venture proposed in late 2003 a seawater cooling project be built for downtown Honolulu. Although ocean temperatures on the beaches around Oahu hover in the mid 70s, they drop to 45 degrees at 1,600 feet deep a few miles offshore. So Honolulu Seawater proposed to run a pipe from 1,600 feet deep to a cooling plant onshore, four miles away. The cold seawater would pass through a heat exchanger where it would cool fresh water from separate pipes used to chill nearby office towers downtown.

Designed to cool 12.5 million square feet of office space — or the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings — the Honolulu system is projected to save as much as 15 megawatts of conventional power, while at the same time cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 84,000 tons a year. The venture expects to secure permitting by early next year, and be in operation in 2010 at a cost of about $165 million.

GEOTHERMAL

Few places in the world have as much geothermal energy potential as Hawaii’s Big Island, where the Kilauea volcano has been erupting since 1983. As long ago as 1881, Hawaiian King David Kalakaua met with inventor Thomas Edison to discuss harnessing the power of Hawaii’s volcanoes.

In the 1970s, a public-private partnership dug the first geothermal well in Puna on the windy east side of the island. Over time, enough hot water and steam was taken out of the ground to fuel a 30-megawatt power plant. The plant, owned by Reno, Nev.-based Ormat Technologies Inc., provides power to about 10,000 homes, or 18% of the Big Island’s total supply, according to Hawaiian Electric.

Conceivably, the Kilauea volcano could provide enough power to meet all of Hawaii’s needs, state utility officials say. But there are several limitations. One is the Big Island’s isolation from the other Hawaiian islands. For example, the ocean is so deep between it and the next closest island, Maui, that officials in the state abandoned a past plan to try and lay an underwater cable between the islands to transfer the geothermal energy.

Another issue: opposition to significant expansion of geothermal by some native Hawaiians, on grounds the volcano is sacred, says Robert Alm, a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric.

–Mr. Carlton is a staff reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal.

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com