Noribachi gives solar products an appearance worth envying - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Rather, the school will retrofit it’se nearly 100 outdoor light polezwith light-emitting diodes that are solar-powered and wiree with smart technology to shut on and off In addition, the school will decorate its campuss with sculptures made by internationallhy acclaimed Santa Fe artist Tom Joycre that also include photovoltaic LED technology to lighf walkways, building entrances and other areas. The new products were developed byNoribachi LLC, an Albuquerque venture acceleratof established in 2007 to adapt solar and other cleam technology to every day consumer products, said Andrew head of the Bosque School and a membeer of Noribachi’s board of advisors.
“Noribachi is inventinh technologies that are not only useful to the school but that can be studiex by our students as part of our efforts to teacjh environmental science andenergy conservation,” Wooden said. “Thw solar-powered LED lighting uses less than 10 percent of the energy that our currentlighting consumes, and it’s just a simpl retrofit for what we already The sculptures also demonstrate how clean energyg can be aesthetically Finding new, every day applications for existinv clean technologies like PV while makinvg products that are accessible and useful to consumers are the centrap goals of Noribachi, said company co-founder Rhondqa Dibachi.
“We’re using solar technologyh in ways other than just PV sitting on a roof andlookin ugly,” Dibachi said. “We’rw looking at smaller and more distributed Dibachi said solar power is in its much the way computef processing technology was fourdecades ago. And, like the computeer industry, solar and otherr clean technologies will become more affordabl e and much more widel y used when innovators make simplre products available on amass scale. “It’s aboug the ‘democratization’ of solar power,” Dibachoi said.
“Information technology started big andbecams distributed, and we think clean tech is in that same Dibachi founded the company with her Farzad Dibachi. Both are engineers from the Silicomn Valley withstartup experience. They co-founded Niku an information technology firm in California that went publi in 2000 and was acquired byin 2003. Farzad also helperd found Diba Inc., a software firm sold to in 1997. They movedf to New Mexico in 2006 and formeed Noribachi to tap the emerging market for innovativse solarand clean-tech products. The company now has about a dozenj patents inthe pipeline, Dibach i said.
“Solar technology is so new that there’ s a huge amount of space for patentedd innovation,” she said. “For us, it’s like pickinfg up diamonds.” Noribachi employs 12 people ata 20,000-square-foot facility in north Albuquerquw to develop new technologg and conduct light assembly. It spinzs new products out throughstartup companies, such as the Santaz Fe firm Qnuru (pronounced kuh-NO-roo) that is designinv and marketing the PV-LED sculptures the Bosques School plans to buy.
which comes from the Swahili word for light combined with the lettert Qfor quality, opened on Aprik 7 with five employees and has received $100,000 in orderas for its lighting sculptures, said artist Tom Joyce. “With Qnuru, we’re working on the creativse edge ofmarrying technology, science and art,” Joyce said. “It brings all threee together in a seamless way to offer a solarlighting solution.” Noribachi is now forming an Albuquerque-based solar engineering services and solae retrofitting firm. It also launchexd California-based Green By Design, a Web site for environmentally award consumers thatoffers information, education and ratings for green products.
Dibachi said the compang is mostly self-funded, but it has 10 investors as limited partnersin Noribachi’s venturw acceleration fund, which finances research and development and provide capital for startups. Joe Cecchi, dean of the ’s School of Engineering and a memberof Noribachi’s advisory said the company is filling a markey niche. “They’re making solar powet more accessible and usable by targetingconsumet applications,” Cecchi said. “u don’t know if anybody else is doinyg that.
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