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Micro-Cap Awarded $1.4 Million Stimulus Grant from U.S. Department of Energy
By: AllPennyStocks.com News
June 23, 2010
Keeping heating and cooling costs down requires pioneering thinking and product development. When that technology makes itself known, companies and governments fall over each other to have it for themselves.
So it was in late June when California-based Southwall Technologies Inc., (OTCBB:SWTX) was awarded a $1.43-million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop advanced technologies aimed at making homes and buildings more energy-efficient. SWTX, based out of the university town of Palo Alto, will use the funding to fast track development of higher performance and lower cost Heat Mirror low-emissivity and solar-reflective films and multi-cavity, suspended-film insulating glass technology to enable the broad commercialization of “super-insulating” R-10 windows.
The contract is significant because of not just the amount, but also that, according to the Energy Department in Washington, the nation’s 114 million homes and 74 million square feet of commercial floor space account for 40% of total U.S. energy consumption, and 39% of total carbon dioxide emissions. Because windows are the energy-efficiency weak link in homes and buildings, the department is focusing grant funding on the development of innovative technologies that can create energy-saving windows that insulate like walls.
SWTX, one of seven California-based companies to receive this grant money, is recognized as a leader in the development and manufacture of high performance, energy-saving films and glass products that dramatically improve the energy efficiency of residential, commercial and automotive glass. Southwall is an ISO 9001:2000-certified manufacturer with customers in over 25 countries.
The company specializes in Heat Mirror insulating glass, a superior multi-cavity solution that suspends one or more low-emissivity and solar-reflective Heat Mirror films inside of an insulating glass unit to create two, three or even four insulating cavities without adding weight. SWTX’s Heat Mirror® suspended-film insulating glass has been selected to be retrofitted into all 6,500 windows in New York’s Empire State Building as a leading component of a major energy-efficiency upgrade.
SWTX, founded in response to the Middle-East-prompted oil embargo of the mid 1970's, has a history of industry-leading energy technology innovations; among them, the world’s first low-emissivity insulating glass product, designated by Popular Science magazine as one of the Top 100 Inventions of the 20th Century; the world’s first spectrally-selective laminated glass product.
The company’s stock price hit the $1.60 mark on June 23, nearly a year to the day after scraping its 52-week bottom of 65 cents. SWTX peaked for the year at $1.79 on October 19 of last year. With the credibility added by the Federal grant money to develop this new technology, this company might acquire some much-needed momentum.
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