Tech Innovation Award To RSL Fiber Systems

RSL Fiber Systems, LLC, an East Hartford, Connecticut-based manufacturer of advanced lighting solutions and illumination systems for commercial and military applications, has earned its second major award in three months with its receipt of the 2010 North American Technology Innovation of the Year Award in Remote Source Lighting, presented by internationally-renowned research leader Frost & Sullivan.

The annual“best practices” awards recognize companies in a wide variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, independent analysis and extensive secondary research.

RSL will accept the award on Feb. 9 at Frost & Sullivan’s 2011 Excellence in Best Practices Awards Banquet in New Orleans.

The company was chosen for the award based upon an extensive and independent analysis by researchers of today’s remote source lighting market. In general terms, remote source lighting refers to the method by which high-performance light is delivered to any number of hard-to-reach destinations, usually in a hazardous work environment, from a remotely located source.

Remote source lighting generates light in one location and delivers it to another – 1,000 or more feet away – via fiber optic cable. The technology is safe, efficient, low maintenance and durable.

The company is the sole-source provider of remote source lighting applications for the U.S. Navy for shipboard use on the Navy experimental craft Sea Fighter, the LPD 17 and the DDG 1000 stealth class ships. Since 2005, RSL has installed some 50 high-performance fiber optic lighting systems on Navy ships, including signaling and navigation lights for the USS New York, one of the Navy’s newest vessels with the keel built using steel from the World Trade Center.

RSL and its proprietary technology are moving into new markets including mining and mine safety, first responders, homeland security, energy and chemical industries, luxury yachts and commercial ships, renewable energy and more.

In 2010, the company was named the state’s leading Connecticut technology company in revenue growth in the advanced manufacturing category by the Connecticut Technology Council and Marcum, LLP. RSL has also earned the Silver Connecticut Quality Innovation Award, and been nominated for “Business of the Year” by the Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce.

A division of Skyler Technologies Group, more about the company may be found at www.rslfibersystems.com.

Stock Analyst Nabs Top Ranks

Michael Judd, president of Greenwich Consultants LLC, received top honors for his stock picking performance in the recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 2009 Best On the Street Analyst Research Survey.

Of the more than 4,000 analysts at more than 260 firms in the WSJ survey, Judd’s stock selection scores, including all analysts in all sectors, were third and fifth highest (#3 in alternative energy and #5 in chemicals).

Judd is an independent research consultant covering more than 35 stocks in four industry groups: agriculture, chemicals, industrial and alternative energy. Greenwich Consultants is based in Rumson, New Jersey.

Whole Foods Powers Up With Solar

Whole Foods Market recently contracted to add solar power to more than 20 locations; including existing installations, solar power will be brought to the rooftops of more than 30 of the company's stores across the country.

The company is also expanding its use of on-site alternative and renewable energy sources for new stores while reducing energy consumption in existing stores and facilities.

Whole Foods Market hosts and pays for the energy delivered by an on-site hydrogen fuel cell at the Glastonbury, Connecticut store. The fuel cell generates 50% of the electricity and heat and nearly 100% of the hot water needed.

According to the company, plans are in place to add fuel cells to other locations such as the Dedham, Massachusetts, store opening in the fall of 2009.

Lee Matecko is global vice president of construction and store development at Whole Foods Market.

Ted Turner: Go "Clean, Renewable Energy"

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
- Thomas Edison (1847–1931)

The new "plastics" is clean, renewable energy, according to Ted Turner, entrepreneur, who invented CNN, among a host of other enterprises.

Turner, in a conversational interview at the University of Southern California Center on Communication Leadership, pointed out that in the movie The Graduate, the secret was whispered that "plastics" were the new frontier in business.

That was then, this is now. He strongly advised audience members (including many budding journalists and broadcast students) to shift focus to renewable energy industries. (He himself has invested millions in Dome-Tech Solar of Branchburg, New Jersey, to create DT Solar. And is thinking of harnessing wind on the vast stretchs of land he owns.)

"What tax breaks and incentives there are should go for the new renewable, locally produced energy that creates jobs here in the United States. That keeps the money in our own economy, because we're just bankrupting ourselves, as Boone Pickens says, by spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year importing foreign oil."

Turner deflected a query on where the future was for media, saying that he was no longer paid by the industry to give his opinion (their loss).

Instead, he said, he truly wants to save the world and is working on many fronts, including women's rights, the UN, malaria prevention (by simple means such as vaccinations and netting) and humanitarian venues.

Impassioned, he talked about the destruction of the environment and the folly of propping up (by bail-out) the automotive industry still making huge vehicles (he owns the first Prius).

Then he spoke clearly about the madness of having "hair-trigger nuclear weapons" in both Russia and the United States that were "impossible to recall once fired." He passionately expounded on his efforts to get this leftovers from the Cold War dismantled and disabled. "If Russia fired one at the U.S. and Bush called Putin to say, we unconditionally agree to your terms' - Russia would say 'sorry, you have 15 minutes.' There is no way to call them back or even destroy them in the air."

Talk about food for thought.

"Renewable energy also creates more jobs than other sources of energy - most of these will be created in the struggling manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy future by investment that allows manufacturers to retool and adopt new technologies and methods."

- Jay Inslee, Congressional leader on the New Apollo Energy Project, an effort to make America the world leader in clean energy technologies.

Regarding renewable energy development, the University of Connecticut has hired six top alternative energy researchers associated with the state’s 21st Century Jobs Act – including Prabhakar Singh, a researcher with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., who is now the new director of UConn’s Global Fuel Cell Center.

Some $4 million in state funding has been provided to create a public-private partnership called the Eminent Faculty program, which has enabled UConn to hire national experts in alternative energy technology.

As part of the partnership, UTC Power of South Windsor, the Northeast Utilities Foundation and FuelCell Energy of Danbury, contributed a combined $2 million as an industry match. Other participants at the center include Distributed Energy Systems, CT Clean Energy Fund and national funding agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, DARPA, ONR.

The initiative is also expected to help meet the state’s goal of reducing fossil fuel consumption by 20% and replacing it with clean or renewable energy sources by 2020.