Advanced Power enters week-long rebranding cocoon

Advanced Power Projects, a company that revamps power plants to make them greener and more energy efficient, will shutter this week, in hopes of reemerging next week as a brand new company with a more expansive roadmap, according to Dow Jones VentureWire.

Based in Fremont, Calif., the company offers a wide array of equipment and services. For instance, it installs steam-injection systems in existing plants to increase capacity and reduce heat rates by 25 percent; it helps lower-emission gas-fired power plants with site selection, permitting, sales and engineering; it acquires under-performing gas-fired plants and retrofits them; and it manages construction. On the equipment supply side of the business, it offers products to integrate gas-fired efficiency with wind, solar, biomass and geothermal plants. It makes its gas turbines more efficient by recycling waste heat.

But apparently the company’s shareholders didn’t like the direction it was headed in, its CEO, Tom Mason, told VentureWire. With the price of natural gas coming down, there wasn’t enough revenue to depend solely on that business channel. To recruit new backers and secure a slot on the green energy bandwagon, Advanced Power will relaunch next week with a new strategy, including a greater focus on solar and other renewable sources of energy.

A little over a year old, the company had raised $13 million in a first round of funding from Bay Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Chesapeake Energy co-founder Aubrey McClendon.

Things aren’t looking good for Advanced’s rebirth. The remainder of its capital raised will be distributed to its investors. Where the money will come from for the new launch is uncertain. The company’s CEO, Mason, says he is confident it can land some contracts, which will give it enough of a boost to raise more venture funding. It has also sent several grant proposals to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The one thing it does have going for it is its licensed technology — the core of its heat-recycling process. Whether this will be enough to found a new enterprise, or if it will eventually be sold off for the money, remains to be seen. A one-week time horizon between closure and relaunch is pretty ambitious. We’re waiting to hear back from Bay Partners’ Atul Kapadia about what went wrong and what went right.

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