Didn’t get ARPA-E money?

Don’t fret.

You still have a chance – and this time things might be slightly different.

The Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy is a program established in 2007 in the America COMPETES Act, but initially funded with $400 million in stimulus to accelerate development of transformational energy technologies.

In short, the program offers startups their best chance at getting a piece of the stimulus pie.

When the first awards totaling $151 million were announced Oct. 26, some of the 3663 firms that didn’t get money, cried foul.

Some of the complaints:

The awards favored University and National Laboratory research over that of private companies.

National Lab employees made up a bulk of the 500 business plan reviewers, which skewed or even politicized the awards.

Some industries, like lighting, weren’t given a fair shake.

Etc.

But Mark Hartney, a program director for ARPA-E, who splits his time between the Bay Area and Washington D.C., had some explanation at a forum Tursday night hosted by the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF to its friends).

For one thing, ARPA-E staff had six months to review 3,700 initial applications and select program recipients for the first round of cash. That was 10-fold the number the agency, which didn’t have a director until October, expected to get. And the agency had to scramble to cull together 500 independent reviewers. Now remember – these are transformational technologies we’re talking about here and it’s not like any Joe Blow off the street is qualified to determine which technologies have the best chances of changing the energy industry as we know it. If the review panel was skewed toward Lab and University experts, it’s because that’s where qualified scientists tend to cluster.

“We viewed our reviewers as advisors and people that could give us input as to what they thought the strength and weaknesses of the proposals," Hartney said. "There are biases in that, but our job, (as program directors) is to filter through some of that.”

Secondly, the agency was only looking at transformational technologies – not those that would help make incremental steps toward a currently accepted trajectory. I understood this to mean that applicants that say, make a light bulb that is five percent more efficient in two years isn’t going to get attention. But lighting systems that have the potential to produce light for 100 times longer for the same amount of power – might.

“We looked at how effective are the programs that are already in place,” said Hartney. “Solid state lighting was one of the areas where we think the DOE has done a very good job and where industry has done a very good job.”

The Agency is also interested in technologies that can reach milestones in a condensed, two year, time frame. That means those that needed longer to produce transformational results, for instance nuclear fusion, aren’t likely to qualify for ARPA-E funds.

“At the end of the day what we’re trying to do is accelerate the rate of progress to validate these ideas,” Hartney said.

Hartney had some good advice for companies that had applied for money the first time and hadn’t made the cut.

The next round will try to flesh out technologies for specific energy challenges. The example Hartney gave was the solicitation by the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), for the development of high efficiency solar cells. Hartney wouldn’t say which technologies ARPA might solicit, but did say that info is coming soon. He also said a new funding solicitation will be released before the end of the year, with another expected early next year.

All $400 million of ARPA-E’s stimulus funding has to be distributed by September of 2010. However, Hartney said he expects future funding of the program through the Department of Energy’s budget is expected to be on par with that $400 million.