Just a day after the company reported record sales and its first-ever quarterly profit, Consumer Reports announced that the electric vehicle manufacturer’s Model S has received the highest test rating of any car in its 2013 car ratings. And just to put a cherry on top, the notoriously tough Consumer Reports writers say that the $89,650 Tesla Model S comes close to, and just may be, the best car ever.

“This car performs better than anything we’ve ever tested before,” Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ director of testing says. “Not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really, really well.”

Wow.

Because the batteries are in the floor, the car’s center of gravity is very low, Consumer Reports says, giving it superb handling. The Model S, which seats 7 with an optional jump seat, has “impressive power” and uses half the energy of a Toyota Prius, for a 200-mile range.

Here’s Consumer Reports video report:

Tesla’s 17″ touchscreen, which drivers use to control the vehicle’s climate and other systems, is “like a giant iPad,” and almost as simple to use, the report states. And despite the fact that Tesla has only been building cars for a few years, the Model S performs better than vehicles made by manufacturers that have been building vehicles for over a hundred years, Consumer Reports says.

Tesla earned its first-ever profit of $15 million this past quarter on record sales of $562 million. In the earnings release, CEO Elon Musk said he anticipates demand of 30,000 cars a year in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. But with reviews like this, he may want to revise that number significantly upwards.

One note for those of us who don’t have $90,000 in loose change under the sofa seats: Musk promised that Tesla’s next model will be much more affordable.

“The Model S is priced substantially lower than the Roadster, and our third generation vehicle will again be priced much lower than the Model S,” he said yesterday in a statement.

CEO Elon Musk said in a letter to shareholders that sales were up 83 percent from last quarter to $562 million as Tesla delivered 4,900 electric vehicles. In addition, gross margin doubled from 2012 to 17 percent, thanks to better use of raw materials, smarter inventory management, and a reduction in the hours required to build each car by 40 percent over the quarter.

The result was a first-ever profit of $15 million. And the future looks bright as well.

“We are pleased with the strong global demand for Model S and are currently receiving orders at a rate greater than 20,000 per year worldwide,” Musk wrote in the letter. “We are seeing orders in a particular region increase proportionate to the number of deliveries, which means that customers are selling other customers on the car.”

U.S. demand alone will be greater than 15,000 cars/year, Tesla estimates, with global demand double that, including 10,000 in Europe and at least 5,000 in Asia.

Investors received the news well, as the stock jumped 31 percent in after-hours trading, going from an in-day low of $55 to an after-hours high of $72.30.

The goal, Tesla says, is to bring electric vehicles to the mass market by making them affordable to all, or at least a wider swath of the car-buying public. Musk and company promised cheaper electric vehicles in the very next model:

“The Model S is priced substantially lower than the Roadster, and our third generation vehicle will again be priced much lower than the Model S.”

Tesla currently has 34 stores and “galleries” around the world, where potential buyers can view the car, and it plans to open 15 more in 2013. In addition, it has 41 service locations, to which the company plans to add another 30 in 2013. Of course, for electric vehicles, charging technology is critical, and the company is building out new charging stations currently, with “a major announcement” expected in the next few months.

In other good news, Tesla ended the quarter with more cash on hand, $231 million, than it started with — despite the fact that it made a second Department of Energy loan repayment of $13 million.

I’m guessing the DoE is much happier with Tesla than it is with Fisker, which recently became the worst VC-backed debacle in U.S. history in addition to burning through almost $200 million of government money.

The Nest smart thermostat continues to get smarter with every software update.

Nest Labs announced the thermostat’s latest update today, which packs in several features that should make the sweltering summer heat more bearable. And as with all of Nest’s updates so far, the new features even work for the early adopters who picked up the first version of the thermostat.

Here’s a rundown of the new stuff:

Sunblock: This helps you avoid issues that may arise from direct sunlight hitting the Nest. Typically, this could lead to overcooling in the summer and underheating in the winter. Nest relies on its light sensor to tell when it’s in direct sunlight, and it adjusts its settings to compensate when the sun is beaming down. 

“Now you can basically put the Nest wherever you want with no worry,” said Maxime Veron, the head of Nest’s product marketing, in an interview with VentureBeat earlier this month.

Advanced Fan Control: Gives Nest owners more control over how their fans run. You could let your fan run throughout the night to bring in cool air or at intermittent times during the day to keep the air fresh.

Cool to Dry: A feature designed for extremely humid climates, this lets Nest optimize your air conditioner to keep your home from getting too humid. It’s more efficient than letting your AC run all day, and it could help you avoid pesky mold problems.

Intriguingly, the feature takes advantage of a humidity sensor that’s been in the Nest since day one. Before the sensor was just used to maintain comfort levels — now it’s powering an entirely new feature.

Nest’s “auto-away” functionality has also been improved, and updated mobile apps enable you to change the temperature with a mock scroll roll rather than just boring arrows. The new Nest software also adds Auto-Tune, which enables Nest owners to save money on their cooling costs under certain energy providers.

Recycling is on the rise, and more consumers are going green, according to a new Earth Day-timed study from Bridgestone.

The company surveyed 4,000 Americans about their green habits and found that 86 percent of consumers recycle, and 52 percent recycle more than they did two years ago.  Bridgestone released these findings today as part of its Earth Day 2013 Consumer Recycling and Sustainability Survey.

The study revealed that 92 percent of consumers say a product or manufacturer’s environmental sustainability has some impact on their purchasing decisions. Respondents also indicated that the most important ways a company can show they are environmentally friendly are creating a product that minimizes energy and water use and that minimizes generated waste and carbon emissions tied to waste.

Seattle, Wash., and Minneapolis, Minn., are home to the most recyclers using curbside or recycling centers; and residents of Riverside, Calif., are the most committed to recycling anything and everything they can.

The infographic released with the study provides tips on how to recycle the most difficult items, including donating large items like refrigerators to local organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

This Earth Day, consumers are reminded to take care of our planet, and as 80 percent of the respondents noted, recycling will continue to grow in importance in the future.

Take a look at the full infographic below.

Photo Credit: Bridgestone America

Nest’s smart thermostat is about to get a bit smarter — no hardware or software upgrades required.

Today, Nest announced that it has partnered with several power companies across the country — NRG Energy, National Grid, Austin Energy, and Southern California Edison — to offer a variety of energy- and money-saving plans for 90 million people.

“We’ve been saving people a lot of energy, but couldn’t we do more?,” said Maxime Veron, the head of product marketing at Nest, in an interview with VentureBeat.

Veron notes that Nest’s auto-scheduling features already saves its customers around 20 percent on energy costs — so it took aim at other ways it could help make energy usage more efficient as well as save people money.

First off, Nest has announced Rush Hour Rewards, a new service that will let the thermostat adjust the temperature in your home around peak energy use periods. So instead of blasting your AC at a peak time, Nest could cool your home beforehand. Or it could allow the temperature in your house to increase slightly when you’re not home.

Power companies already let their customers opt-in to similar programs today, but those involve giving up the control of your house’s temperature entirely without much feedback. With Nest, you can chart the Rush Hour Rewards on your smartphone, and you can always revert the temperature if you don’t like the way it’s being optimized.

According to Veron, Nest’s Rush Hour Rewards could save you 40 percent of your AC usage time. That’s a savings of about $20 to $60 per season.

Nest is also debuting a similar optimization feature for seasons, dubbed Seasonal Savings. Relying on what it’s learned about your home energy usage patterns, Nest can slowly decrease or increase the temperature of your home at the beginning of warm and cool seasons. Nest also takes your location into account, so it knows how to handle fall in New England versus fall in the Southwest.

The company says the minor Seasonal Savings changes could energy savings of 5 percent to 10 percent per season. That’s not much for one family, but across millions of Nest owners it’s certainly significant. Even better, the company says 80 percent of its Seasonal Savings customers stick with the optimized schedule.

Nest is also offering simpler rebates for energy companies to offer their customers. Unlike most other industries, energy companies (well, some) actually want their customers to be more efficient, since it makes the limited power grid much easier to manage. Rebates are one way to convince people to adopt high-tech thermostats like Nest, but they’ve traditionally involved lengthy paper forms and take weeks to issue a check.

The fix? Nest has worked together with National Grid in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to offer instant $100 rebates when you order one of its thermostats online. If successful (and I can’t imagine it won’t be), you can expect other energy companies to adopt this rebate eventually.

Nest is based in Palo Alto, Calif. Earlier this year, it was reportedly in the midst of raising $80 million in funding at an $800 million valuation.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Chances are you’ve heard that we’re using a lot of energy every day and need to, you know, slow our roll. We’ve done an excellent job figuring out how to use fossil fuels, but what about our other natural resources? Wind, some say, is our next best thing.

An infographic created by QuinStreet street below shows that in the last 62 years alone, our energy consumption has increased by 46 percent. Every home is using up more energy charging, lighting, and Internet browsing, that we need to start branching out for energy sources. The good news is, we have!

Since last year, we’ve upped our use of hydro, solar, and wind usage. But while solar powering is still a greentech favorite with nearly a 34 percent increase in usage, wind is creeping up there with a 16 percent increase.

And we’re not just talking far-off wind collectors that only provide energy for facilities willing to use it. Some, such as Oceana.com, believe the energy will trickle all the way down to machines used every day like our cars.

The U.S. Department of Energy current supports seven project sites for six-year-long off-shore wind “initiative.” If Congress allows it, each sit will be given up to $47 million over four years to work on wind energy. These projects are located in Austin, Tx.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Cleveland, Ohio; Seattle, Wash.; Stamford, Conn.; Monhegan Island, Maine.; and Virginia Beach, Va.

Check out the infographic for more on how wind energy has advanced:

Courtesy of: WorldWideLearn.com

Wind energy image via Shutterstock

Several thousand Tesla owners have now purchased their cars by ordering and paying for them online after visiting a Tesla Store showroom.

No franchised dealers are involved.

That’s a model that Tesla Motors feels is crucial to getting its electric cars into the mainstream.

State and national auto-dealer groups strongly disagree.

Very, very strongly.

Taking it federal

Now Tesla’s ambitious CEO Elon Musk suggests that perhaps the company will attempt to ensure its legal right to sell cars directly at a Federal level.

In an interview last week with trade journal Automotive News, he suggested that two routes might be Congressional legislation or a Federal lawsuit alleging restraint of interstate trade.

He suggested that the company would rather fight “one federal battle” than “20 different state battles.”

Musk has been in the forefront of the fight to protect Tesla’s store-and-online-ordering model.

Most recently, he testified last week in Texas on a bill that would explicitly permit customers to buy direct from carmakers who sell “only all electric-powered or all battery-powered motor vehicles.”

In other words, from Tesla Motors.

State laws protect dealers

Ever since Tesla announced its plans to sell cars directly, with factory-owned Tesla Stores and Tesla Galleries acting only as display showroms, car dealers and their associations have denounced the plan.

They’ve also sued Tesla for violating franchise laws in several states–Massachusetts, most notably–and gotten laws changed in others to make Tesla’s model flatly illegal.

Most states have some variation of a law that says automakers cannot open wholly-owned dealers that compete with franchises selling the same brand.

Dealers feared in the post-war period that automakers would set up their own dealerships and give them preferential financial terms over franchised dealers.

But Tesla Motors has no franchised dealers to protect.

Changing Colorado law

Nonetheless, the Colorado Auto Dealers Association got that state’s law changed in early 2010 to forbid direct sales of any car by any maker soon after Tesla opened its first store there.

State auto-dealer groups are viewing the Colorado legislation as a model, and such efforts may pop up in other states as well.

Meanwhile, William Underriner, last year’s chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, told a group of Detroit journalists in December that the association has “a whole mess of lawyers in Washington” who work on state franchise laws.

NADA could conceivably deploy those attorneys to support state dealer group efforts in every location Tesla seeks to open a store or service facility.

David Westcott, this year’s NADA chairman, called Musk’s suggestion a “mistake” and vowed that NADA will “vigorously defend the franchise system.”

Auto dealers say that Tesla should use existing dealers who are already operating and know their local markets.

Musk counters that those dealers make the bulk of their profits from selling gasoline cars, meaning that they have little or no incentive to support a disruptive product like the all-electric Tesla Model S luxury sport sedan.

Dealers protect buyers

In an interview last year, Tim Jackson, who heads the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, detailed three reasons that dealers feel Tesla’s online ordering and company store model does not protect the company’s buyers:

• If or when Tesla Motors fails, independent dealers can continue to provide parts and service for the cars;
• Opening stores is expensive and time-consuming; Tesla should spend its money and resources more wisely; and
• The reputation of all auto dealers will be hurt if Tesla fails and strands its owners.

Tesla, it’s safe to say, likely disagrees with Jackson’s arguments.

Petition to White House

The idea of helping Tesla Motors to make its non-dealer stores legal seems to have at least some support among the general public, too.

A petition on WhiteHouse.gov urges the Obama Administration to “overturn franchise laws that limit auto manufacturers from selling their vehicles directly to consumers.”

Posted on Tuesday, the petition must reach 100,000 signatures by May 16 to be considered by the White House.

Thus far, it has fewer than 2,000–though we suspect that number may rise as Tesla fans and supporters get wind of it.

This story originally appeared on GreenCarReports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

The Solar Foundation is making it easier to track solar jobs with the State Solar Jobs Map, an interactive online tool showing job numbers for all 50 states.

Over 119,000 Americans have a job in the solar industry, and with a 13.2 percent increase in employment in the past year, the industry is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing industries in the country.

The interactive map breaks down solar employment at the state level, providing information on the size of industry subsectors and shows users how their state stacks up to others on issues like key solar policies, jobs per capita, and number of homes powered by solar energy.

The State Solar Jobs Map provides a singular insight on the growing industry, apart from the numbers. The report noted that California has more solar jobs than actors, and Texas has more solar workers than ranchers.

“We are anticipating that solar jobs are going to continue to increase at the national level,” said TSF executive director Andrea Luecke. “These jobs figures demonstrate that the U.S. solar industry remains a powerful source of local job creation.”

The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts significant job growth as well – by supporting 440,000 permanent jobs by 2016.

California led the nation in solar jobs in 2012 followed by Arizona, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, proving that abundant sunshine is not necessarily essential for a strong solar market. In New Jersey, top jobs include installation, manufacturing and project development.

Although the top states don’t catch the same amount of rays, what they have in common is policy tools that support renewable energy and solar in particular, including green building and energy efficiency initiatives.

It’s also getting cheaper to install solar, which is key to company growth, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report. The top solar jobs states all saw a significant decrease in residential and non-residential costs of installation, and 31 percent of employers agree that price declines drive growth.

“People want solar, people like solar, but the upfront cost has been an issue,” Luecke said. “But the declines in component prices are helping to make the installed costs much lower, and now companies can pass along the savings to the consumer.”

As solar becomes a competitive energy source for more Americans, it continues to grow the economic opportunities from east to west coast.

The Solar Foundation is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1977 that works to increase the widespread adoption of solar energy through educational outreach, policy research, and market transformation.

The president’s recent budget proposal includes $282 million for advanced biofuel technology research. This is quite encouraging given the rather public pull-back in continued biofuels investment from the investment community.

This pull-back is not surprising. The first wave of advanced biofuels investments (Advanced Biofuels 1.0 or ABs 1.0) haven’t quite worked out.  These investments focused on extending beyond corn and sugarcane ethanol into a variety of technologies including advanced fermentation processes, advanced solid-state catalysis, algae digestion, and pyrolysis processes. They targeted new chemical products to be produced from cellulosic feedstocks, such as butanol and gasoline.

Silicon Valley and many other investors have taken a hit on these bets. Matt Norden’s blog post covers that story pretty well. It is clear why they haven’t worked and, in hindsight, we should have seen a few things coming. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Underestimated capital costs

With biofuels, getting to market involves constructing a commercial production plant. When ABs 1.0 startups did the math on costs, they came up higher than expected – but not higher than any other commodity chemical plants. Taking an audit of a few S-1 filings from 2012, the lowest capital costs for small, “Beta-version” plants were in the $180+ million (Fulcrum BioEnergy). This is on top of the, let’s say, $50-100 million in research and development most startups required to get to that point. This puts ABs 1.0 in a risk category that will make it very challenging for a pure-play startup to cross the proverbial chasm and show a return for investors.

Technologies haven’t quite worked

Many of the VC-backed ABs 1.0 players were just applying new advancements to old technology pathways without addressing their known limitations. For example: Biochemical fermentations have limited yields. Catalytic processes have high capital costs and relatively low product specificity. Producing deoxygenated hydrocarbons from biomass requires significant oxygen removal, reducing yields. Algae processes have several concurrent mass transfer limitations creating scale-up inefficiencies. These limitations make it unclear if these technology pathways are efficient enough to realize sufficiently attractive economics for a first commercial project that would merit follow-on investments.

The bar is too high

Investors wanted solutions that could compete with fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis. While this is a rational expectation, it’s actually quite ridiculous. There’s really nothing better than oil for making liquid fuels, given its physical properties. Biomass is an inferior feedstock in nearly every way. Expecting petroleum parity implies a significantly more efficient process than oil refining from inherently limited technology pathways. That expectation seems unrealistic given the known technology pathway limitations. Something more tenable for early processes might have been more appropriate.

There will be no Google-type of success with the technology pathway focus that was in-place for ABs 1.0. A new one is needed. But there also exist inherent challenges to investing in biofuels with a standard VC model. A new one of those is needed as well.

Although I am not an expert in investing, there are a few things I think may need to happen to make the capital and technology risk work:

• Strategic investors may need to come into the fold in earlier rounds. This may require a new relationship between strategic investors and traditional technology investors to provide the proper risk context to make these types of investments.
• Migrate from all-equity investments to a mix of equity and debt (or convertible notes). This obviously has a different risk profile and may require creation of a fundamentally different fund. Other creative structures involving anti-dilution clauses might provide additional incentives for early investors.
• Make going public an expectation from the beginning, with the caveat being getting acquired (getting acquired is less likely). This may focus the startup’s go-to-market planning.
• Investors must have courage. Nobody ever made money through fear, so there’s a level of insightful, bold leadership that’s needed by someone in the industry. In other words, biofuels needs an Elon Musk.

These suggestions aren’t without challenges, but there’s nothing groundbreaking about them either. We’ve seen many examples of the first two among ABs 1.0 companies as well. So we’re not talking about starting a revolution here.

An encouraging comparable is the emerging bio-based chemicals industry. In this industry you see stronger involvement among strategic investors than traditional VC-backed startups, indicating a better alignment of risk for these investments. Since the market is different, the existing technology pathways may be sufficient to reach commercial operations at more reasonable costs. We’ve even seen Bio-Amber this week set its terms for a $128 million IPO.

Getting organized with the right type of fund from the beginning would certainly pay dividends down the line for investors (no pun intended). The technology pathway(s), however, will have to radically evolve in tandem in order for investors to have a shot when Advanced Biofuels 2.0 arrives.

Doug Williams has worked in business development for the biofuels industry for 6 years. He is the author of “Advancing Fuels: A Review of the Challenges Facing the Advanced Biofuels Industry”

[Image credit: Steve Jurvetson]

Between that date and today, Fisker Automotive would create perhaps the most beautiful car ever made, raise almost $1.4 billion dollars from investors as diverse as Leonardo di Caprio and Kleiner Perkins, obtain a $528 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, balloon to 600+ employees, default on loans or investment conditions at least four separate times, spend $535,000 on a website, get sued by its own employees, get evicted from its primary business location, and be investigated by the government — apparently for its incredible ability to burn a billion dollars while delivering only a few thousand actual completed cars.

What a wild, crazy ride it’s been.

“Fisker spent a stunning $900,000 for each vehicle it produced,” PrivCo chief executive Sam Hamadeh told me. “Then they sold them to dealers for an invoice price of just $70,000.”

PrivCo, a research firm focused on non-public companies, has compiled an exhaustive dossier on Fisker, its cash, its commitments, and its massive failure to produce anything like a functional, profitable business. While burning through $1.4 billion dollars, Fisker produced fewer than 2,200 cars, PrivCo data shows, 600 of which remain unsold on dealers’ lots. And 1,200 investors, which include university endowment funds and company pension plans, are learning that their cash has been completely wiped out.

Even worse?

The government was grossly negligent in its issuing of the Fisker loan, Hamadeh maintains, saying that Fisker is the biggest public loss since the infamous Solyndra Solar debacle, which cost the government as much as half billion dollars. Not only did the U.S. Department of Energy apply “negligent underwriting standards” in granting the Fisker loans, it also failed to enforce the loan conditions as Fisker breached the loan terms, PrivCo says. That failure cost the U.S. taxpayer an extra $192.3 million.

That’s bad enough. But sadly, it gets even worse.

Even as Fisker continued private fundraising efforts, when the DOE privately issued a Drawdown Stop Notice to halt payments to the stumbling car company, it failed to warn future investors that Fisker was in default. As PrivCo writes in its report:

U.S. Department of Energy made no announcement to the public that Fisker was in Default of Its Loan and Credit Agreements and no longer had access to the remaining balance of $336.4 Million, resulting in continued reliance on hundreds of additional individual investors purchasing Fisker stock in the hundreds of millions of dollars through the Advanced Equities “Fisker Funds” limited partnerships as well as reliance on that reasonable assumption that Fisker had continued and substantial access to the remaining $336.4 Million of credit line liquidity through the U.S. government.

At the end of the long, sad story, Hamedeh says, Fisker has less than $20 million cash in hand, has stopped paying all creditors, and faces multiple lawsuits.

“Fisker Automotive may well go down as the most tragic venture capital-backed debacle in recent history,” Hamadeh said in a statement. “The sheer scale of investment capital and government loan money — over $1.3 billion in all — was squandered so rapidly and with so little to show for it that the wreckage is breathtaking. Bankruptcy will be the end of Fisker, but for the taxpayers, venture capital firms, individual investors, and Fisker’s suppliers, it will all be too little too late.”

Here’s the long sad tale in infographic form:

Scientists have found a way to cool houses without air conditioning — and without using any power at all.

Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, and graduate students, Aaswath Raman, and Eden Rephaeli, are working on a cooling panel that could possibly replace your air conditioner.

How? By radiating the vast majority of incoming sunlight into the outside world.

“The structure basically does two things: It radiates the heat out in the atmosphere into outer space, and the device reflects sunlight to ensure that the sunlight does not heat up the device itself,” explained professor Fan, a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The device is a metal-dielectric photonic structure capable of radiative cooling in daytime outdoor conditions. The structure behaves as a broadband mirror for solar light, while simultaneously emitting strongly in the mid-infrared within the atmospheric transparency window. What that means: It reflects visible light, and also radiates heat back out with a frequency that allows the infrared waves to pass unimpeded through the atmosphere, back out into space. As a result, it achieves a net cooling power in excess of 100 watts per square meter at ambient temperature.

Furthermore, we’re told by the team that the panel will require no electrical input. Essentially, it will sit on the top of the roof of your house and keep you cool, even on the hottest of days, without drawing any power.

The three-member team recently published its findings, and hopes to roll out an experimental prototype within a few months. They’ve spent a year doing extensive simulations and theoretical calculations.

The initiative is supported by Department of Energy. “There’s been quite a bit of interest from companies,” Fan told VentureBeat, without disclosing any names.

Besides commercial use, the product could be put to good social use.

“We are building a prototype as we speak,” said Fan.

Image Credit: Prof. Shanhui Fan

But speed wasn’t the only issue.

Rather, the race for better, smaller, faster supercomputers now includes an adjective that wasn’t nearly as common five years ago: greener. In other words, more energy efficient. And, not incidentally, cheaper.

“I’ve been to Los Alamos,” Rob Clyde says. “In many cases it’s not just the cost of the electricity, it’s the fact that you just can’t get more.”

Clyde is the CEO of Adaptive Computing, which produces workload management software to make supercomputers and company’s private clouds more efficient — more green. I talked to him about what it takes to make super-computing super-efficient.

It’s a big problem.

One supercomputer that was the fastest in the world from 2010 to 2011, TH1, reached 2.566 petaflops. But to do so, it consumes over four megawatts of power, which at $0.10 per kilowatt/hour is $3.5 million a year. And four megawatts is about the electricity needed to power perhaps 3500 homes, which now need alternative energy sources.

So, how do you fix it?

Increased efficiency is, of course, key. But that increased efficiency can’t come at the cost of performance — not when supercomputers or major private clouds are running mission-critical applications for governments or companies. Clyde says Adaptive helps with both.

“We run on the fastest supercomputer in the world,” he told me. “And we run on the greenest supercomputer in the world.”

There are essentially three ways to improve efficiency.

The first is to minimize waste by consolidating workloads. In most private clouds and data centers, the average server utilization rate is a pitiful 8.5 percent. Supercomputers, which are intensively used by scientists, are better utilized, but some are still only in operation half the time. If you can drive the utilization rate up by consolidating workloads and scheduling computing jobs, you can achieve 3-4X energy savings alone, Clyde says. Especially when paired with the second strategy: green policies. When workloads are scheduled, there are times when the data center or supercomputer is not being used.

In those cases, Adaptive’s software, MOAB, simply powers down.

The third is to use more efficient processors, which is not so much about buying one particular type of processor as it is using the right kind of processor for the right kind of job. GPUs, or graphical processing units, are hyper-efficient at certain types of mathematical calculations. Intel’s Xeon chip is better at other operations. Using the right chips for the right job can yield another impressive slice of planet-friendly power.

All together, the changes add up. Bigtime.

“Today’s Beacon supercomputer is the top green system in the world,” Clyde told me. “It has the best gigaflops per watt rating at 2.5 gigaflops per watt, which is six times more efficient than RoadRunner.”

That’s impressive, considering that five years ago, RoadRunner was considered one of the most efficient supercomputers. And needed, as energy not only gets more expensive, but we get more aware of conserving and efficiently using the energy we produce.

That same approach works with what is currently the fastest supercomputer in the world, Titan, a hybrid machine that uses both GPUS and traditional CPUs to achieve more than 10 petaflops. And it also works with company’s internal clouds or data centers, which are growing at startling rates — and using massive amounts of energy.

“We run one of the largest private clouds in the world at a global bank,” Clyde told me. “They have 30-50,000 servers right now, and they tell us that by the end of the year, that will be close to 100,000. For a typical data center, we can provide 2-2.5X power savings, and for supercomputers, we can often come close to saving them half their energy costs.”

That’s green, clean … and fast.

photo credit: Argonne National Laboratory via photopin cc, Los Alamos National Laboratory via photopin cc, carrierdetect via photopin cc

Hey folks, it’s Dark Sky Week, a time to extinguish the lightbulbs, switch off the smartphones, and consider the impact light pollution has on our planet and our ability to enjoy it.

One artist has taken the time to reimagine a slew of famous skylines without the endless human-made lights — lights in skyscraper windows, car headlights, millions of phone and tablet screens, laptops, neon signs, TV screens, even those giant, glowing billboards you see next to the freeway.

Check it out:

The artist behind the series is Thierry Cohen, a Parisian and longtime professional photographer. Since the 2000s, he’s taken a lot of time and talent to focus on the impact of digital technologies on our world and our future. In addition to the Darkened Cities series, he also created a series of images called Binary Kids, which puts a metaphorical overlay of technology on portraits of humanity’s next generations.

Limited edition prints of the Darkened Cities series are available via Cohen’s site; you can buy 66-centimeter and 100-centimeter versions.

Light pollution is the next big green crusade — and given the rapid proliferation of glowing screens, it makes total sense. Researchers at the International Dark-Sky Association say it’s causing cancer, increasing insomnia, spurring sexual dysfunction, and hurting the migratory patterns of animal species — all that in addition to robbing urban-dwelling people of one of our greatest treasures: our view of the rest of the universe.

Image credit: Thierry Cohen

EcoMotors is poised to revolutionize cleantech engines after securing funding for the production of its Opoc engine.

The Opoc engine is EcoMotors’ clean, efficient, lightweight, and low-cost internal combustion engine. The technology, developed by EcoMotors, generates the same amount of power with half the weight and size as a conventional engine, the company says. It promises 20-50 percent better fuel economy than current state-of-the-art engines.

Consumers will benefit when these engines hit the market, improving the aesthetics and performance of cars and trucks.

“These engines take up less space in the cabin for the same amount of power, and will allow for more creative designs for the vehicle itself,” said Andrew Chung, partner at Khosla Ventures, in an interview with VentureBeat.

Zhongding Power, one of the largest automotive component conglomerates in China, will finance the $200 million and construct the first Opoc plant in the Anhui Province. The plant will have the capacity to produce 150,000 engines per year, and over $1 billion in revenue potential.

This internal combustion engine could answer a problem many consumers face: They want a high-performing vehicle for a low cost with good fuel economy, and increasing numbers of them want one that is environmentally friendly.

“Clean vehicles of the future need to be something that isn’t expensive, doesn’t cause fear in the consumers’ eyes, and you need to fuel these automobiles,” Chung said.

This internal combustion engine is less expensive than hybrid or electric vehicles, and produces 25-35 percent less carbon dioxide, EcoMotors claims. It’s based on an ”opposed piston-opposed cylinder direct gas exchange operation,” according to the EcoMotors website, which, it says, provides the emission benefits of a 4-cycle engine with the simplicity and compactness of a 2-cycle engine.

The engines are set for production next year, but won’t be seen in vehicles until 2015-2016. However, consumers could start to see the engines in products like portable generators as early as next year.

In late 2012, the Blackstone Group, a global investment firm, reached a deal worth nearly $2 billion with Provo, Utah-based Vivint that would enable it to own over 50 percent of the premiere home automation company — and offer Vivint the resources it needs to grow into its bright future as a leader in the home automation industry.

According to the New York Times, the deal is “aimed at helping Vivint continue its growth as a major provider of automated home services.”

And grow it has. Vivint, formerly APX Alarm Security Solutions, was founded in 1999 by current CEO Todd Pedersen. The company installed over 900 systems its first summer (as APX Alarm), and in 2006, it accepted funding from several private equity companies, including Goldman Sachs, to provide more support and customer service.

In February of 2011, these early efforts came to fruition with the founding of Vivint, a company that meets challenges every day in home automation. Todd Pedersen and his staff not only work competitively to challenge each other to create better solutions for home technology every day, but they are also committed to eco-conscious efforts to provide these services with a minimal impact on the environment. By linking solar energy to home automation solutions, Vivint provides the right combination of new technology and environmentally-friendly equipment to meet homeowner needs, and Vivint reviews by major business and technology experts show that the company is doing more than ever to promote customer approval and to meet changing technology needs.

With the additional funding from firms like Goldman Sachs, and most recently from the Blackstone Group, Vivint is able to provide better quality customer service — one of its main goals. Vivint reviews proclaim that the company’s dedication to customer satisfaction has paid off in loyalty and satisfaction. The additional resources also allow Vivint to continue moving towards its other goal: innovation in the home security industry.

Geared Towards an Innovative Future

Vivint currently services over 675,000 customers in the United States and Canada, and was ranked number 46 on the Forbes “Most Promising Companies” list. Today, Vivint is the largest home automation company in North America. Vivint’s technology has continued to evolve to offer homeowners the latest in home technology and solutions that allow them to enjoy the best in protection and convenience. Vivint reviews by customers tell the story—the company is satisfying homeowner needs across the country through a network of cutting-edge systems and monitoring. Vivint recently opened the Vivint Innovation Center—a place where Vivint reviews existing technology, and works steadily toward improving services and products for the future.

Automation and Home Technology

Currently, Vivint specializes video surveillance, remote access, electronic door locks, monitoring and severe weather alerts. One of the lynchpins of the Vivint system is the remote access feature. Users can check cameras, door locks, and other home features wherever they are from a computer or smart phone. Vivint remote access is supported by most systems and most tablets. Moving into the future is easy with the Vivint reviews of home activity through mobile devices.

While saving customers money and providing high-tech energy solutions are an important part of Vivint’s mission, keeping families safe is always the first priority. Trained professionals offer 24-hour, 365-day monitoring of all systems to ensure that any emergency is dealt with swiftly and effectively. Vivint reviews of monitoring indicate that the company has some of the fastest response times in the industry, and Vivint won the 2012 CSAA Central Station of the Year award for its performance.

More recently, Vivint is gearing itself towards providing more energy-efficient solutions. Users can remotely control thermostats, allowing them to use as little energy as possible, as well as lighting to provide security and to reduce unnecessary use. Vivint reviews by customers indicate that this is one of the most-loved features of the entire system and helps homeowners save on utilities each month.

Solar and Clean Energy Efforts

In January 2012, Vivint launched its solar program to cut down on energy use and provide environmentally-friendly solutions to homeowners. Today, Vivint has 4,500 solar systems installed, with another 3,000 planned, and plans to reach 10,000 solar-managed homes by the end of 2013.

Vivint has bold plans for the future of solar technology as well. Vivint reviews indicate that the company is in the process of developing a zero-emissions home that uses only solar features from the date of construction. In three to four months, the company plans to have a showcase home finished that prospective buyers can view to get an idea of what a solar-based home looks like and how they can incorporate this technology into their own home plans.

The Future of Vivint

One area in which Vivint is focusing future efforts is that of solar panels and clean energy. While Vivint reviews by satisfied customers are encouraging, many of these homeowners would benefit from even more upgrades in terms of solar energy usage and eco-friendly changes to their homes. Vivint’s dedication to customer satisfaction goes beyond what the customer asks for; the company wants to give the customer what he or she truly needs, even if it means technology the homeowner has not yet considered.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Feb 27^th 2013, Todd Pedersen expressed the company’s goals for solar panels and other forms of green energy. “We’ve kind of evolved from security,” says Pedersen, “and what we’re really focused on is putting panel technology in people’s homes to integrate services inside of the home. So it’s gone from security to home automation… and now solar, which is just part of the initiative that we’re trying to roll out there—just home services that really improve people’s lives.”

The company isn’t looking to slow down anytime soon, and Pedersen seems focused on paving a path into clean energy for the home automation industry. “We’re super focused on customer acquisition costs—driving those down—and installation efficiencies,” says Pedersen. “We see a world where it is going to continue.”

Sol Voltaics is announcing today it has used nanotechnology to build solar cell modules that are up to 25 percent more efficient than the cells currently on the market. If the company can deliver its SolInk material as advertised, then it could make it a lot cheaper to introduce solar cells to a broader set of customers.

The technology could make solar power in homes and office rooftops much more affordable, which is necessary to increase adoption of solar and help it compete at the same cost as electricity produced from fossil fuel plants. That argument has enabled Sol Voltaics to raise $11 million in funding from public and private Scandinavian investors.

Sol Voltaics’ technology comes from nanotechnology, or the study of materials that are a billionth of a meter in length, and it has been in the works for 15 years at Swedish universities. Now its day has come for adoption in a mainstream business, said Dave Epstein [above], a longtime microprocessor expert (he happened to appear as a cheerful young computer engineer in Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, “The Soul of a New Machine”) and the chief executive of Sol Voltaics.

“We can increase the efficiency of energy capture, conversion, and storage,” said Epstein. “There’s no smoke and mirrors here.”

Two advances make it possible. The team, led by founder Lars Samuelson (a Lund University professor), created a technology known as Aerotaxy, which makes it cheaper to make nanomaterials. With that, they are creating gallium arsenide nanowires that can serve as solar collectors and that they can integrate directly into solar wafers, known as solar cells. The smarts happens at the atomic level.

The way Epstein figures it, manufacturers don’t have many options for bringing down the costs of solar. Thanks to a worldwide solar glut, economic forces have brought down the costs of installing solar on your roof. And it’s harder and harder to squeeze cost improvements out of everything from the installation process to the modules that hold the cells. The cells themselves must become more efficient to lower costs.

Epstein said about two-thirds of the cost of commercial solar systems involves land, labor costs, and other factors that solar developers can’t directly control. By raising the efficiency of solar modules, Sol Voltaics can give manufacturers a chance to sell more valuable, high-margin products. Solar power utilities will be able to generate more power at a lower price with the same assets.

In other words, a solar company with a big solar panel installation could produce 1.2 megawatts of electricity with the same equipment and land that it currently uses to make 1 megawatt.

As a material, gallium arsenide has been used in solar for years because of its high reliability and high efficiency at converting light into electricity. Orbiting satellites use solar cells made from gallium arsenide to power their internal systems. But gallium arsenide is expensive to make. SolInk dramatically reduces the cost by minimizing the amount of materials used. A nanowire is just one micron in length and 100 nanometers in diameter.

Less than a gram of nanowires goes into to crystalline silicon panels. Nanowires need only cover a small portion of the surface area of crystalline silicon or thin-film solar cells to benefit from all of the features of gallium arsenide. Right now, rivals such as Innovalight (bought by DuPont) can boost a solar panel’s efficiency from 15 percent to 16.1 percent. But with SolInk, a panel could go from 15 percent efficient to almost 19 percent, or from 20 percent to 25 percent. The theoretical limit in converting sunlight to electricity is around 27 percent to 29 percent.

In a research paper published in the journal Science this year, Lund University and Sol Voltaics researchers demonstrated that indium phosphide nanowires covering just 12 percent of the surface of a solar cell resulted in an efficient of 13.8 percent in converting sunlight energy into electricity. The Fraunhofer Institute, a research center in Munich, certified these results. In another paper published this year in Nature, Samuelson described the process using gallium arsenide nanowires.

With Aerotaxy, the resulting solar cells should be able to concentrate more light in an area. Nanowires are typically made through epitaxy, in machines that grow layers of chemicals on top of wafers. It’s a slow and expensive process. With Aerotaxy, you can build nanomaterials by mixing vapors in the air in just a second. The active materials bond to form larger, uniform structures while in motion.

The upshot: Nanowires are grown in air, literally. And Aerotaxy can help you generate tens of billions of nanowires per second on a continuous basis. It’s like cranking out nanowires with a popcorn popper instead of a craftsman. That’s the makings of an affordable and scalable technology for mass production, Epstein said.

“The results have been far better than we ever expected,” said Samuelson. “We understand how different materials react or bond to one another. With Aerotaxy, we essentially create an atmosphere where we can better harness those physical and chemical properties.”

Sol Voltaics will sell SolInk to solar cell and module manufacturers. A manufacturing process can go into existing solar factories to handle the insertion. The company plans to produce gallium arsenide nanowires for demo purpose by the end of 2013, and pilot commercial production is expected in 2015.

Demand for solar is growing globally, with the total number of gigawatts expected at 29.8 in 2012 to 50.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to Greentech Media. Epstein figures that solar is here to stay, since the sun is the only resource that will surely outlast fossil fuels, wind, and other clean energy sources in the long run.

“In spite of what you might hear, solar is a healthy market,” Epstein said.

Sol Voltaics has raised $11 million from Industrifonden, Foundation Asset Management of Sweden, Teknoinvest, Provider, Nano Future Invest, and Scatec Energy of Norway. It has also raised money from public entities including the European Union, Vinnova, and the Nordic Innovation Center. Epstein hopes to raise $10 million to $20 million more this year. Epstein estimates it will take less than $50 million to get the technology from the lab to commercial production.

The company was founded in 2008 and it has 20 or so people. Epstein, who formerly worked as an investor at Crosslink Capital, has also been a consultant to microprocessor companies such as Transmeta. Samuelson is one of the people who picks the candidates for the Nobel Prize in physics. He is a professor at the Lund University department of physics and founder of the Nanometer Structure Consortium and a worldwide authority on nanowires. Magnus Ryde, the former chief executive of TSMC America and 25-year veteran of chip making, is chairman and an investor.

Over time, Aerotaxy could be used to make nanomaterials for power electronics, light-emitting diodes, batteries and energy storage. The company has applied for 40 international patents. Its research partners include the Nanometer Structure Consortium, Lund University, and Lund Nano Lab.

“The promise of nanotechnology has been held back by complexity, low yields and cost. Aerotaxy paves the way for integrating new materials into products in a streamlined manner. This is nanotechnology made simple,” said Alf Bjorseth, Chairman of Scatec and founder of Rec Solar.

Have you ever thought about installing solar panels? Or how your commute affects the environment and how you can lessen your impact?

This Earth Day, experts at the U.S. Department of Energy can answer your questions.

On April 22, the Energy Department is hosting a Google+ Hangout and is inviting the green-conscious community to participate and learn more about ways to save energy, learn more about efficiency, and share their own success stories.

The live discussion will answer questions from videos and emails submitted by April 16 and also answer questions in real-time from Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #askEnergy.

You can submit questions via YouTube with the #askEnergy tag emailed to newmedia@hq.doe.gov or posted in the comments on the Energy Department’s Facebook page. A 30-second video length is suggested, to make it quick and easy for the Energy Department’s social team to answer inquiries.

Spend this Earth Day learning how you can save time and money. The discussion will be live-streamed by Google+, YouTube, and energy.gov/live.

The Earth Day Hangout is another way the Energy Department is engaging with users online. The Energy Saver website already provides tips and advice for saving energy and cash, complete with ways of making your own energy.

More detailed information will be posted on the Energy.gov website as the Hangout gets closer.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Its mission is to “drive the mass-market adoption of residential solar.”  CPF provides a business-to-business marketplace that connects professionals in the solar industry with people looking to invest in it. The platform also offers white-labeled software-as-a-service tools to create proposals, and drive sales and customer engagement.

The solar sector has had (and caused) some headaches over the past few years. Some companies have struggled to become gain market traction and generate revenue, while other publicly traded companies saw their share value drop as global oversupply and decreased production costs pushed down the price for panels. With people like President Obama and Warren Buffett emphasizing the future of the space (and the impending doom of climate change), the solar industry clearly isn’t going anywhere.  The challenge is to find sustainable business models that make solar technology cost-effective for both businesses and consumers, while also lucrative for the companies behind it.

CPF describes itself as a “familiar enterprise software and financial services company” with a marketplace that is “capital-light, high-scale, and high-margin.” Solar companies provide opportunities for distributed solar financing on the site and CPF connects them with interested investors. It has three sources of revenue- transaction fees for marketing and underwriting services, software licensing fees for the tools, and assets management fees for the people investing in the projects.

“Our investor partners earn favorable returns on stable investments with managed risk,” the company said on the site. “Our solar partners gain access to solar leases power purchase agreements (PPAs) that they can brand and sell to homeowners who want the benefits of solar without the cost and hassle of owning and maintaining a system.”

The marketplace currently has more than 100 solar partners and manages more than $500 million on behalf of its invest partners. It has experienced 325% revenue growth, and thus also provides desirable opportunities for venture capital firms and utility holding companies. Existing investors Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Claremont Creek Ventures, and Sand Hill Angels participating in this round, along with new investors Edison International and Hennessey Capital. There are also two more utility holding companies that invested, which do not want to be public at this time.

The fact that utility holding companies are becoming increasingly interested in solar could provide a boost for this market, which at the moment has seen a decline in deal activity. CPF’s platform helps them come into the solar market. With this $37 million, CPF will continue to accelerate development of software products and services.

CPF was founded in 2006 by Match.com founder Gary Kremen. It is based in San Francisco and has raised more than $65 million to date. Read the press release.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

The result?

In prototype state, Fontcuberta’s nanowires capture light 10 percent more efficiently than traditional solar panels ever could. And to build these tiny solar collectors, she uses 1,000 times less material — specifically, gallium arsenide.

Here’s how:

The efficiency, as PhysOrg says, is due to nanowires’ incredible capability to funnel more light than expected — at only several hundred nanometres wide, the nanowires funnel as much light as if they were 12 times bigger. That translates to more light being captured and greater efficiency at turning an equivalent amount of sunlight into disproportionately more usable electrical energy.

“The enhanced light absorption is shown to be due to a light-concentrating property of the standing nanowire,” the team’s academic paper says.

A thousand times less material, of course, also translates into less cost and less waste. A modern house, Fontcuberta estimates, currently needs 40 kilograms (almost 90 pounds) of material for enough solar panels to supply its energy needs. However, with nanowire solar technology, it would require only 40 grams (1.4 ounces).

Larger solar initiatives become more possible as well, as projects that might have cost $100,000 in gallium arsenide alone can now potentially use only $100.

Fontcuberta is a researcher in the semiconductor lab at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Image credit: YouTube

Costs have ballooned since the full plans for Steve Jobs’ anticipated $3 billion futuristic office building were published by Cupertino’s city council, according to a new report from BusinessWeek. And as previously reported, the move-in date has been pushed back again from 2015 to 2016.

This is a project that Apple cannot cancel, for two good reasons, but it is also a project that is a massive problem for the leadership of the Cupertino company.

Apple seems under constant sales, revenue, and market share pressure, which has pushed its share price down hundreds of dollars and its market capitalization down hundreds of billions of dollars, so building a massive and incredibly expensive monument in which to work seems like the wrong focus.

In other words, it has bad optics.

But Apple can’t cancel the project because this is its spiritual leader’s legacy. It’s the building that Steve Jobs helped design and the building he said he hoped architecture students the world over would come to see and learn from. As such, canceling the project would be brand suicide.

And Apple can’t cancel the project because it absolutely needs the space. Head count has grown from just 10,000 in 2002 to over 50,000 in the U.S. alone, and Apple has been leasing buildings and building satellite campuses to house all those workers.

So the company is looking to shave a billion dollars from the cost, BusinessWeek says, by being a little less detail-oriented about the fit and finish of the building, which was to have been built to iPhone-level quality standards.

The question is, does that cut also compromise part of Steve Jobs’ legacy.

Clean your dungeons and feed your dragons, kids — Neverwinter is about to enter open beta next week.

Publisher Perfect World Entertainment announced today that Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter will open up to millions of gamers on April 30 with an unrestricted beta. Neverwinter is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the PC set in the Dungeons & Dragon table-top gaming universe.

“The direct response and support from the Neverwinter community during our Closed Beta Weekends have pushed us to make Neverwinter the best free-to-play MMORPG anyone has yet seen,” Cryptic Studios executive producer Craig Zinkievich said. “On April 30, we go into open beta. That’s when the world we’ve labored for years to build comes to life — that’s when every gamer can login and play what we’ve worked so hard to create. We could not be more excited.”

Neverwinter Founders, players who already committed to in-game purchases, will also get another 60-hour trial weekend beginning on April 12. Gamers that bought one of the Founder packs will also get early access to the open beta.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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911 Metallurgist, which helps mines and recyclers extract precious metals from ore and, apparently, phones, has exhaustively checked the iPhones and other mobile devices. Each iPhone 5, for instance, contains $1.58 of gold, $.36 of silver, $.05 of platinum, and $.12 of copper.

Those numbers may sound small, but the phone holds from six to 300 times more precious metal than the equivalent amount of ore from a mine.

Also, in addition to the more familiar precious metals, smartphones also contain traces of huge swaths of the periodic table, particularly those “rare earths” that today’s electronics so depend on: Yttrium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Gadolinium, and Europium, among others.

The problem?

“At the moment, there are no really good environmentally friendly methods available to mine and to recycle rare earths,” says Swedish University of Technology prof Christian Ekberg.

So less than one percent of the precious rare earths used in today’s phones are recycled — even though we appear to be running out of good sources for these vital materials.

Here are all the details, in visual form:

This week, Everybody Solar funded the installation of a 13.5 kW system on the roof of the Redwood City-based  nonprofit organization, which will save Rebuilding Together Peninsula (RTP) about $100,000 over the course of its 20-year life-span.

“We want to help nonprofits free up their resources to fund their projects,” Everybody Solar representative Liz Oh told me today. “So we’re bringing them renewable energy to help them benefit from going solar and getting free and clean energy.”

Source: Everybody Solar

60 solar panels arrive for Rebuilding Together Peninsula

All together, Everybody Solar will be installing about 60 solar panels on RTP’s roof with the help of another nonprofit dedicated to renewable energy, SunWork Renewable Energy Projects. The panels themselves were donated by a NYSE-listed Chinese solar energy company, Jinko Solar, and will provide enough energy to power their building, appliances, computers, and lighting … basically everything RTP uses that needs electricity.

And when there’s more power than needed? RTP will be able to feed it into the electrical grid and sell it back to its local utility.

This sort of donation makes dollars and sense, Everybody Solar’s executive director Youness Scally says:

“For each dollar we raise, RTP will save $2.20, and each dollar RTP spends on home improvement makes a difference to a neighbor in need.”

This is just the start, according to Oh. Everybody Solar is looking for new projects, and is currently taking submissions via its website from nonprofit organizations that want to benefit from green energy, and reduce their carbon footprint. That will require extra funding, which Everybody Solar is raising in a variety of ways.

“We were considering using a Kickstarter-type model,” Oh told me. “But we have been successful at getting donations through other channels such as events, private donors, and public donations via our website.”

Everybody Solar’s next event will be in April in San Francisco, where they’ll enlist some star power to go with their sun powered principles. It’ll be Solar Rock Stars for a Cause, date to be determined.

photo credit: WagnerSolar via photopin cc

Greentech startup Reel Solar has just alerted the SEC it’s raising a $4 million round of funding. The company doesn’t have a functional website and hasn’t announced any products, but we’re going way out on a limb and wildly guessing it has something to do with solar energy.

The full Form D is included below. Briefly, it states that the still-stealthy company is taking a round $4 million from green tech VC firm Nth Power, Vancouver-based Pangaea Ventures (an investor in a previous round), and Mayfield Fund, a Silicon Valley powerhouse.

Reel Solar is based in San Jose, Calif., and was founded in 2009. Its execs include founder Dori Gal (pictured), who previously worked at (and recruited other Reel Solar team members from) chipmaker KLA Tencor; Edward Grady, and Kurt Weiner. Former PG&E chef Peter Darbee is also a director, the filing states.

Read the full Form D below:

Subaru unveiled its first-ever hybrid at the New York Auto Show today.

“What?” you ask incredulously. “They’re just now doing a hybrid?”

Yeah, well, they were early to the game on supporting LGBT equality. Ya win some, ya lose some.

The automobile taking up the spotlight today is the XV Crosstrek Hybrid. It’s pretty much the regular XV Crosstrek but with a heavier engine that sometimes won’t use gas.

From its landing page:

Designed with the foundation of Subaru engineering, the all-new 2014 XV Crosstrek Hybrid offers the control and balance drivers expect from a Subaru vehicle. And as the most fuel-efficient AWD hybrid crossover in America, it also offers an earth-conscious attitude.

The SUBARU BOXER engine provides a low center of gravity for agile handling. Subaru Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive flows power to all wheels for a constant grip on the road while still giving you great fuel efficiency. Best of all, it’s an Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle making it the lowest-emissions AWD hybrid crossover in America.

The hybrid version of the Boxer engine weighs around 300 pounds more than the standard gas-only version. In low-speed situations, the car can run on electricity, and it can start on electricity. The gas engine is used for the extra get-up-and-go.

The company also showed off a new WRX concept car at the show:

While the options for clean energy are growing for U.S. consumers, it’s not always easy to see what your options are, which is something clean tech startup Choose Energy is focused on.

Today Choose Energy announced it’s closed a new $4 million round of funding to help advance its web service that enables consumers to compare prices for all the retail electricity plans available in the area, educate on each type of energy, and enroll them into a plan. The goal is for people to find more affordable power services while ensuring that your home or business is using a green source of energy. (And I’m sure some people would even be OK with getting a higher monthly bill if they knew the power was coming from a renewable source, such as like wind and solar energy.) The company said about 40 percent of its customers choose green energy plans.

“Ten years after deregulation, we’re still experiencing a huge communications gap between the consumers of energy and retail energy providers,” said Choose Energy CEO Jerry Dyess in a statement. “Our goal is to bring transparency to the complex decisions consumers face when choosing a new energy plan in deregulated states.”

The new round of funding, Choose Energy’s first, came from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Stephens Capital Partners. The startup plans to use the new capital,  to further grow the company, advance its energy comparison service, and focus on building enterprise-level services for retail energy companies.

Founded in 2008, Plano, Tex.-based Choose Energy Inc. is currently available in Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, but the startup has plans to enter all 19 states that allow deregulated energy companies to operate as well as 22 states that have implemented deregulation of natural gas.

Energy diagram from Choose Energy

Yahoo is building a new customer care center and making big additions to an existing data center facility in Lockport, New York. The expansions will create 115 new jobs.

The Lockport data center, Yahoo says, is a flagship of its energy-efficient data center design. The facility first opened in 2010, and today’s news will add to the company’s commitment to developing environmentally conscious data centers.

“Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible company, and we thank New York state and local authorities for working with us to ensure we continue to power our data center with clean energy,” said Yahoo central technology EVP David Dibble in a statement to the company’s investors.

The data center will use low-cost hydropower from the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Plant as well as an outside-air cooling system to keep machines at optimal temperatures. All of this is part of the Yahoo! Compute Coop (YCC) architecture — what the company calls its hardware and infrastructure design.

Yahoo is one of a handful of large web companies placing more emphasis on efficient, innovative data center design. Google has long emphasized its green(er) data centers, and Facebook has taken the whole thing a step further with its Open Compute Project, a cooperative effort among some of the world’s biggest tech companies to create the best, cheapest, greenest data centers possible.

As part of Yahoo’s expansion into western New York State, the company will make a $3.5 million gift to the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo over the next seven years.

The Westly Group, however, is doing something right. The venture capital firm has closed a $160 million fund to invest in up-and-coming clean/green tech startups.

Former California state controller and chief financial officer Steve Westly founded The Westly Group in 2008 to accelerate innovation in clean energy. While many investors have seen little returns on investments in this sector, and funding in this space declined significantly in 2012, the Westly Group has fared well. Investments in Tesla Motors, biofuel company Amyris, and China Recycling Energy Corp have all gone public, and Westly sees this area growing in the future.

“We are more bullish than ever on clean tech,” said Westly in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “Costs are going down, revenues are going up, and we’re seeing better business models. People have gotten smarter. And corporate investors are replacing pension funds and university endowments — they understand how large this market.”

Electric vehicles and biofuel aside, the Westly Group has invested in startups that have a more broad interpretation of clean tech. For example, portfolio company Revolution Foods provides healthy meals to charter schools and school districts and is currently active in 12 states and 500 schools.

While clean tech has struggled a bit in recent years, major venture capital firms and corporations are still interested in it. Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Draper Fisher Jurveston, and companies like General Electric and Siemens are actively investing, and companies like Google are taking big steps to become more energy efficient.

Furthermore, during his recent state of the union address, President Barack Obama emphasized the need to drive new research and technology in this market to decrease reliance on foreign countries and fossil fuels, address climate change, and create jobs.

Clean tech has plenty of room for innovation and growth, and with this latest fund, The Westly Group stands to benefit when green tech becomes cool again.  The fund has 50 investors; the three largest are corporate investors Citi, the German utility E. ON, and the SK Group of Korea. The Westly Group previously raised a $127 milion in 2009 and paid back its limited partners, who invested $50 million of their own money.

Photo Credit: rocknroll_guitar/Flickr

The  team has decided to ‘kill our accelerator program completely’ and become a venture firm with a built-in design studio. This significant pivot is in an effort to nurture the portfolio companies during their entire lifecycle, rather than just during the nascent stages, and provide more meaningful support.

“We’ve found that a three-month program simply isn’t enough. Our startups told us they wanted more- a lifetime partner who will roll up their sleeves and help push their business forward for years to come,” the company said in a statement.

Instead of the common three-months-of-guidance-to-demo-day model, Greenstart has created a ‘build-and-deliver’ design studio. The 10 person team will focus on user experience, building sustainable business models, and brand design.

“The breakout success of companies like Nest, AirBnB, Uber, and of course Apple, in increasingly being recognized as driven by their design,” Greenstart said.  “Not skin-deep, visual design like a logo and website, but a deep systematic approach to user experience (UX) for their products and services. But the problem for startups is that this kind of design is expensive and hard to access.”

Strong design can make-or-break a company, but good designers are difficult to find, hard to nail down, and expensive. The five pillars of Greenstart’s approach are business design, design research, interaction design, graphic design, and storytelling. The lifetime commitment means that Greenstart goes “all-in” with its startups, funneling all its resources into a smaller pool of companies working to addressing climate change.

Greenstart officially opened its doors in San Francisco in 2011. It hosted clean tech startups that were ‘fast,’ meaning they could generate real revenue in a year and either reduce reliance on fossil fuels or improve existing clean technology. Greenstart currently has 13 portfolio companies including RidePal, a private commuter bus system; Root3, predictive analytics for on-site energy plant operations; and Watt, which visualizes and gamifies a company’s energy usage.

In the past few years, scores of accelerator and incubator programs have cropped up around the world and it seems like they are a dime a dozen. Some, like Greenstart, health IT accelerator Rock Health, and ed-tech accelerator K-12 are dedicated to a specific topic, while others focus on growing the startup ecosystem in a particular region. Others, like Y Combinator and 500 Startups, invest across the board and are primarily valuable for putting entrepreneurs in front of investors.

Clean tech is a difficult space. Venture capital funding for this sector is struggling and many investors shy away from these types of investments. However, with advances in hardware development, the success of companies like Nest, and the ever-present need for greener technologies, businesses, and lifestyles, Greenstart’s new approach could make clean tech startups into more desirable (and sexy) investment opportunities.

Electric car manufacturer Fisker, which has been wracked by production delays and quality issues forcing recalls, has now lost its rock-star automotive designer, co-founder, and chairman whose name adorns the company, Henrik Fisker.

Fisker resigned today, says BusinessWeek, citing disagreements with other executives.

The car maker has received over $500 million dollars in government funding and and has raised multiple additional hundreds of millions of dollars in at least three funding rounds, but it has not come close to approaching Tesla’s degree of success with electric vehicles in spite of creating perhaps the most beautiful alternative energy vehicle available, the Fisker Karma.

According to Forbes, the Department of Energy has frozen a green-energy loan recently, and, in financial straits, Fisker had considered selling a majority stake to Chinese manufacturer Geely Automotive.

The auto manufacturer has only delivered 1500 vehicles to date, while rival Tesla will ship 20,000 cars this year alone.