VentureBeat

SunRun teams with Virgance to finance solar for consumers

Hard economic times mean fewer consumers will shell out for expensive solar panels. Also hard hit are startups that offer no-money-down programs to lease panels or buy their power but can’t find banks to partner with. So, teaming with SunRun — one of the few outfits that still has a healthy line of financing — is a minor coup for Virgance, a company that plans to sign up thousands of new solar users.

I’ve written about… Continue Reading

Ethanol’s a bust, so move to chemicals, says Genomatica

Genomatica, a bioengineering startup that says its scientific approach can rapidly find alternatives to fossil fuel-based chemicals, has some advice for the beleaguered ethanol industry: Don’t make ethanol.

The company has bred a new microorganism capable of going through the same distiller’s process that makes ethanol, but instead producing methyl ethyl ketone, a common industrial solvent also known as butanone or MEK. Chief executive Chris Gann says existing ethanol plants can use the microorganism without making… Continue Reading

Virgance gets funding, deal to install solar for businesses

Virgance, a San Francisco startup with multiple business lines all focusing on social activism, has scored $750,000 in seed funding and is also unveiling a new deal that should help it install more solar panels on roofs around the Bay Area.

We’ve covered Virgance before, although it’s a difficult company to track given that it has several founder teams, each focused on different ideas. There’s Carrotmob, which just soft-launched today; it organizes groups of consumers to… Continue Reading

Worio adds tag-based discovery to Google

One of the latest attempts to break into the search market is Worio, a Vancouver, B.C. startup that uses tagging to augment results from Google and other big engines. The company went into beta last July, and today is announcing that it has indexed 100 million pages.

New search companies usually fall in one of two categories. First are blockbuster attempts to “beat” Google with a better technology. The last of these to try its luck… Continue Reading

PowerMeter: Proof positive Google wants to run your life

Joining Google’s Android, Calendar, Docs, Mail, Maps, Reader and a few dozen other products today is a new application, PowerMeter. It’s not launched yet, but when it is, it’ll help you keep track of your home power usage by tapping into information sent from your devices to your electrical meter, and from there on to the “smart grid”.

What Google is showing of PowerMeter looks a bit like a line graph, with the X-axis representing time… Continue Reading

Inaction in IT means computing still ain’t green

If you were reading VentureBeat a couple of weeks ago, you may have seen an article suggesting that most people don’t care about global warming — despite a recent deluge of media about climate change and renewable energy, many people aren’t convinced. Today a new study is suggesting that the geeky, forward-thinking information technology industry is also behind on becoming environmentally friendly.

The study by Think Ecological, a group owned by BPM Forum, Intel and Rackable… Continue Reading

Twine, explosively growing, is an early success

It hasn’t been long since Twine, a semi-intelligent bookmarking service, launched last October. That means it’s too early to call the company a surefire success. On the other hand, all signs so far are pointing that way: A casual check I recently made revealed that Twine’s traffic has been growing far more rapidly than the vast majority of its startup peers.

That may not sound exciting to some disillusioned readers. Twine, if you’ll recall, was an… Continue Reading

Solar Power Partners takes on $32M for solar panel sales

Add another solar-as-a-service company to the list of those unfazed by the recession. Solar Power Partners, a Mill Valley, Calif. company that installs panels for commercial customers but retains ownership in order to sell the electricity from them, has taken on $32 million more in funding.

The money was reported this morning by peHUB. SPP also took money less than six months ago, which at the time was enough to put it over the $100 million… Continue Reading

Borrego Solar gets $14M for the boring side of solar

Solar power offers plenty of exciting technological advances to talk about. If those advances were all that mattered, nobody would have to worry about whether the business is profitable or efficient. Yet those nasty little details persist, making or breaking companies like Borrego Solar, an installation outfit that just received a $14 million investment.

Borrego is a veteran California company that puts solar racks on homes and businesses. It and its peers have flourished over the… Continue Reading

VC-backed Cash4Gold attracts complaints (updated)

[Updated: Cash4Gold representative Weronika Cwir has responded, and vehemently denied many of the allegations made in this article. She said the main source VentureBeat quoted was a short-term employee terminated by the company who has malicious intent. Below is her response in italics:]

Virtually every point made by the author of the posting is false or misleading. Following is a list of some of those statements:

1) It is false to claim there is a Cash4Gold “scam.”… Continue Reading

News flash: Nobody gives a damn about global warming

An overlooked item from the world of cleantech reporting: The ever-fickle light of public attention is fading from the problem of global warming, in favor of, well, everything else. A Pew Center report from last week suggests that there are few things people care about less than whether the sea comes creeping over their doorstep in a few decades.

The report isn’t an anomaly, either. Despite plenty of media attention, a growing number of data points… Continue Reading

BrightView picks up $6M for improved solar manufacturing

BrightView, a solar tech firm that hopes to improve the production of photovoltaic solar cells, has raised $6 million in a first round of funding. (The company is not to be confused with BrightView Technologies, an optics company in North Carolina.)

Rather than manufacturing its own cells, BrightView plans to work with other companies to optimize its manufacturing and lower costs. Due to its proximity to Europe, the company plans to work there; one of its… Continue Reading

Personal rapid transit gets another chance at life

Beneath the tall buildings and alleys of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City, in a hidden, vault-like space, a unique transportation system may one day whisk passengers back and forth to their destinations, faster than any bus system and more accurately than rail. Instead, it will use small, driverless pods that bear as much resemblance to taxis as public transit.

The scheme is called personal rapid transit (PRT), and it’s an idea that’s been floating around for over… Continue Reading

Aptera sets October delivery date for three-wheeled electric vehicle

One of the stranger-looking representatives of the electric car revolution is approaching its public debut. The Aptera 2e, an all-electric car that the company calls an “aerodynamic marvel,” has reached pre-production and is scheduled to start being manufactured in October of this year.

Aptera’s real claim to fame, aside from building electric vehicles in the first place, is its three-wheeled design that places two wheels at the front of the car and one in the back…. Continue Reading

Five uses for an invisibility material (other than dumb Harry Potter references)

Haven’t you heard? Scientists have finally invented the perfect tool for porn shopping, shoplifting and general mayhem: A material that can redirect wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum, effectively vanishing from sight.

In 2006, Duke University researchers created a metamaterial that channeled microwaves around itself, allowing them to reform on the other side. Now the same team has found a way to speed up development, potentially making the technology useful for smaller wavelengths like visible light (microwaves,… Continue Reading

Solar panels pose an environmental hazard, claims report

Sometime in the late 1970s, toxic chemicals from semiconductor plants in San Jose, Calif. began leeching chemicals into the local water supply. As birth defects soared and families sickened, investigators began a search for the culprits, eventually fingering IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor in 1981.

At the time an extremely high-profile case, the episode helped introduce public safeguards to high-tech manufacturing. It also provided for the birth of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group that is… Continue Reading

Electric cars disappointed in 2008 — and 2009 won’t be different

The Detroit Auto Show is underway, and the world’s most famous vehicle brands are touting the next generation of cars. And although yesterday’s fervent promises of hydrogen-powered vehicles have mostly fallen away, they’ve been replaced with new promises, this time centered around the idea of the electric car.

Don’t believe the hype. Although electric vehicles are almost certainly the way forward, much of the motion is really a show intended to sway the opinion of consumers… Continue Reading

Syngas startup Ze-gen takes $20M to torch trash

Ze-gen, a company that plans to round up waste from construction sites and turn it into gases that can be used to generate electricity, has won $20 million in funding to help build its first full-size facility.

Based in Boston, Mass., Ze-gen has been moving quickly to prove its process at a small test facility, completed in the second half of last year, and start building a larger, commercial plant.

The gasification process is a bit different… Continue Reading

Graphene Energy raises $500,000 for ultracapacitor storage

Graphene Energy, an Austin, Tex. startup based on technology from the University of Texas and Virginia’s College of William and Mary, has taken a $500,000 seed round from Quercus Trust and 21Ventures.

Ultracapacitors (insulating layers between conductors that house electric fields) are being explored by a variety of startups for their energy storage, usually as a component accompanying batteries in electric cars. Graphene is seeking to improve the technology by improving capacitance, or the amount of… Continue Reading

SolFocus takes on $47.5M more in quest to sell concentrating solar

SolFocus, the most heavily-funded concentrating solar startup around, has just drawn a bit further ahead of the pack with $47.5 million in fresh capital. With the money, the company has edged near $150 million in total funding, and with luck, widespread installation of a currently rare type of solar panel.

In the concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) arrays of SolFocus and similar companies, a tiny, highly-efficient solar cell becomes the focus of sunlight intensified many times over by… Continue Reading