VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Intel cuts fourth quarter estimates — The chip maker says sales could fall by as much as 19 percent, and things look similarly bleak for chip companies Applied Materials and National Semiconductor.

IPhone takes on Nintendo and Sony in portable gaming — Among other things, the iPhone tempts developers with lowered distribution costs. There are almost 2,000 games already available in Apple’s App Store.

Google joins smart grid group — The group, called the Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, includes companies that make electricity meters and software for sharing information between utilities and their customers.

Game designer Richard Garriott leaves NCSoft after his successful journey into space — Garriott, who made his name with the famed Ultima series of roleplaying games, says going into space has sparked new interests that he wants to pursue.

Larry Shapiro, former creative chief at Brash, becomes president of Oddworld Inhabitants — Prior to leading Brash, Shapiro represented the makers of the “Oddworld” game series as an agent at CAA.

Technorati founder Dave Sifry launches OffBeatGuides — The site lets you build your own guidebook, then buy a physical copy or download it as a PDF.

Cyber thieves are making a killing stealing corporate data — Tech security experts tell USA Today that most corporations aren’t doing enough to control how employees use the web, leaving them vulnerable to these attacks.

Check how Zoho’s applications are doing using Zoho Status — This new transparency should give customers more confidence in Zoho’s online business software.

Harmonix founders get $300 million-plus pay day from Viacom — Almost half that money is a bonus for the Rock Band game’s stellar sales.

Is Twitterank a scam? — The web application, which measures your popularity on micro-messaging service Twitter, drew criticism for asking users for their passwords, but the app’s creator says he’s not trying to steal people’s passwords.

Java startup SpringSource acquires G2One — G2One is the company behind scripting language Groovy. Now SpringSource says it will offer support for Groovy and the related programming framework Grails.

To a layman, electricity seems like a fairly straightforward proposition: It flows like water through wires and into gadgets, end of story. But the real story is a bit more complex, which is why Enphase Energy, a company that makes a device called micro-inverters for solar panels, has raised a new $15 million financing.

An inverter converts direct current (DC), which is what solar panels produce, into alternating current (AC), the type of electricity you’re usually using. Making a small, efficient inverter is particularly hard, and Enphase is one of the few companies that claims to be able to produce them. Adding to their obscurity, micro-inverters are designed to be reliable, and thoroughly hidden away.

But attaching a micro-inverter to each solar panel in an installation can eke out some five to 25 percent more electricity, according to Enphase. Because there’s on each panel, they can be used to pinpoint problems, which standard inverters can’t. And as a final advantage, using micro-inverters is also cheaper than installing a standard centralized inverters, at least according to Paul Nahi, the company’s CEO.

Enphase launched its product in June, and Nahi says it has since shipped out thousands, with a backlog for tens of thousands more by year’s end. He expects the company to sell hundreds of thousands of micro-inverters next year, with production ramping into the millions afterward, if the market for solar panels continues to do well.

You can see Enphase’s visualization tools below, the same as what a home-owner who had micro-inverters installed would have access to. The company currently sells into the home and commercial markets, but ultimately plans on getting into the utility market as well.

Rockport Capital led the $15 million financing, with Applied Materials joining as a strategic investor, and previous backer Third Point Ventures returning. Along with its $6.5 million second round, Enphase has taken $28 million to date; Nahi says it will likely seek another equity financing in the future if it continues to scale as planned.

In the solar cell market, there are three broad categories. Thin-film manufacturers produce cells that convert little of the sun’s energy to electricity, but are dirt cheap. Opposite thin-film, companies like Spectrolab and Emcore make highly efficient, but very expensive cells. Between are the standard solar photovoltaic makers, with average efficiencies, and average prices.

The result is a pricing balance that gives each group a slice of the overall market. But what if it were possible to have the low production costs of a thin-film maker like First Solar, plus the 30 percent-plus efficiencies of a Spectrolab? Most industry pundits would say such disruptive technology is a pipe dream, but Wakonda Technologies is claiming to be able to make it happen.

What makes Spectrolab’s technology so expensive is the necessity building its cells atop a single-crystal wafer, a sheet of material that is painstakingly manufactured as a flawless whole in order to precisely control its electrical properties. Wakonda, a newly-emergy Medford, Mass. startup, says it has the ability to “simulate” those wafers with a cheap metal foil, much as thin-film makers do. Think of it as a bit like replacing expensive real diamonds with cubic zirconium.

Unfortunately, Wakonda isn’t giving many real specifics on its technology. Its credibility instead relies on an all-star cast of backers. The venture firms helping supply its $9.5 million financing include Advanced Technology Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. Notably, Wakonda also has the financial support of Applied Ventures, the investing arm of Applied Materials, a large tech company that has some of the most advanced thin-film manufacturing technology around.

If Wakonda’s technology lives up to the early claims of thin-film manufacturing prices with over 30 percent cell efficiencies, it will not only leapfrog the existing solar industry, but will also be less expensive than any existing energy generation technology, including coal, natural gas and nuclear.

Still, talk is cheap, and Wakonda’s technology has yet to move out of the labs. And in case it does meet its targets and leapfrogs the existing solar industry, it still has some contenders, such as the ultra-cheap solar concentrating technology that Sunrgi claims to have. Here’s to both of them living up to their promises.

BridgeLux, maker of chips for “light emitting diodes” that are environmentally cleaner lighting sources than standard lightbulbs, has raised a $23 million third round of funding, according to VentureWire (subscription required).

It joins the rush of other LED companies, including D.lightdesign (coverage), Quanlight (coverage), Intematix (raised $25 million from DFJ and Crosslink), Group IV Semiconductor ($8.2M from Khosla Ventures and BDC Capital). Yet another company, publicly traded Cree, has sued BridgeLux for patent infringement.

The BridgeLux round was led by new investor Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and included DCM, El Dorado Ventures, Harris & Harris Group. New investor VantagePoint Venture Partners also participated. It adds to the $8 million already raised by the company. The company’s LED chips provide light in devices such as mobile phones, camera flashes and automobiles.

Meanwhile, Ottawa-based Group IV also raised another round from Garage Technology Ventures Canada, Applied Materials and existing backers.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. estimates that the market for LEDs used for illumination and display will grow to $4 billion in 2001 from less than $1 billion in revenue last year, VentureWire noted.