David Lammers

Tom Ortman and a Re-Energized Austin
May 28, 2008

The energy crisis presents opportunities to the long chain of the IT industry, and equipment and materials engineers are right in the thick of it. Tom Ortman, a former IBMer who now is president of Concurrent Design Inc. (Austin, Texas) is a good example.

Ortman learned how to layout chip production lines and build custom equipment starting at Big Blue’s Mannassas, Va., fab, and ended up in Austin. His company now employs ~18 engineers who work with clients to develop custom machinery and production lines for medical, clean energy/solar, and semiconductor clients.

A lot of Concurrent Design’s work now is in Oregon, a state which is extending aggressive incentives to solar-related companies. XSunX (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) is a Concurrent Design client, and Ortman and his crew are working to help build an amorphous silicon thin film PV line.

Another recent project: a large-scale solar concentrator built by Emcore Corp. (Albuquerque, N.M.), where Concurrent Design engineers worked on the mechanical design.

With a lot of older U.S. chip fabs now being taken out of operation, some of them are being converted into photovoltaic factories. The Concurrent Design engineers help lay out these PV production lines, source and qualify equipment, including the mechanical design of custom equipment, Ortman said.

Solar is a complex field, with many different technologies vying for funding and customer acceptance. Would one form eventually prevail? “I see the situation as many branches of the family tree, and there is a place for almost all of them,” he said.

Solar itself is a significant but probably small part of the energy solution, he said. A key event in Ortman’s career came when he met Richard Smalley, the Nobel Prize winner and carbon nanotube inventor. Before his death in October 2005, Smalley gave a number of speeches about the energy crisis, noting even then that the high energy density of oil, and the ease with which oil can be transported, made it such an alluring energy choice, albeit a limited one.

Like many engineers, Ortman felt a need to improve his communications skills, and joined the Toastmasters Club to learn to speak in public. When Smalley gave a speech at a SEMI-organized nanoelectronics event in Austin, Ortman offered Smalley a free critique of his speech, an audacious proposal which Smalley willingly accepted. Smalley was a solar proponent who nevertheless believed that the large-scale solution to the world’s ballooning energy needs lay in nuclear power. One nuclear power plant needed to be constructed every week just to meet the increasing load, and nuclear was the only way to add so much non-polluting energy, Smalley argued.

Ortman drives a 1988 Volvo, a car that he intends to finally trade in when plug-in cars go on the market in two or three years. Austin’s mayor, Will Wynn, is touring the country making his own energy pitch: that plug-in cars can play a big role in reducing U.S. dependence on oil. It makes sense for Austin, which can tap into West Texas wind energy. The wind blows hardest at night there, generating cheap electricity at a time when those plug-in cars would be getting their batteries re-energized throughout the region. Mayor Wynn argues that a plug-in could be charged for 25 cents worth of West Texas wind energy.

To make that vision a reality, smart meters would need to be installed to make sure the added load on the grid would come at night, and not during the peak daytime hours when A/C is running full-out.

In the course of an hour or so over breakfast, Ortman had touched on the need for better power semiconductors, smart electricity meters, large and small solar facilities and solar-enhanced windows and rooftops, the role of nuclear, and a new generation of cars and trains. It was eclectic stuff, and Ortman recalled back to the last time that the chip industry was in a deep recession and Austin’s technical work force was feeling the sharp edge of the axe.

“Things were so depressing back in that 2002 downturn. Now, there are similar pressures but a lot of people are feeling like these are really exciting times. We are in a transition period to a new world, in the midst of developing a good vision for the future. There are so many challenges. It is like plate tectonics, things are shifting so quickly.”

With so many possibilities, education is the gating factor. “We need educated people who can create new value,” he said.

Posted by David Lammers on May 28, 2008 | Comments (1)