VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Sony opens to in-game ads — The company is about to announce support for ads in the PlayStation 3 video game console, and in-game advertising company IGA Worldwide will be the first to announce a deal, according to Forbes and other publications. As video games become both more lucrative and more expensive to make, this seems like an obvious revenue source, albeit one that may not be welcomed by all gamers. No word on which games will be the first to include ads, but I think there’s something weirdly appealing about the idea that billboard space in the Grand Theft Auto games could become the equivalent of a real billboard.

EA confirms acquisition of social gaming service Rupture — Game giant Electronic Arts has confirmed its acquisition of ThreeSF, the company behind Rupture. The service is the brainchild of Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning, and there have been rumors that EA had acquired ThreeSF for $30 million. EA did not release any details on the acquisition.

Music service Pandora now available as a desktop app — The startup, which delivers a personalized music stream to users, has built a desktop application using Adobe’s AIR platform. Pandora could already be streamed to mobile devices or home entertainment systems, but as far as computers go, this move is a big step because it moves Pandora out of the web browser. It’s not exactly a subtle application that runs in the background, but instead looks almost identical to the Pandora homepage. The company says this is necessary “for now” to display ads.

YouTube adds video annotation feature — Video creators can now add informative or snarky commentary in speech bubbles or other formats to the movies they upload. I would have included a sample video, but it looks like the annotation feature doesn’t support embedded videos yet. The feature is still in testing mode, and YouTube says full functionality will eventually include embedded videos and support for multiple languages. There don’t appear to be any plans to let viewers — rather than creators — add their own annotations.

SoCal Edison agrees to buy power from eSolar, a solar thermal company — The companies say the deal should result in the construction of 245 megawatts worth of concentrating solar towers in Southern California’s Antelope Valley by 2011.

The truth is revealed about Twitter’s constant downtime — The startup has been doing a lot of talking about the reasons behind its scaling problems, but Valleywag has an alternate explanation.

Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, has taken a number of stakes in solar and wind startups over the past year, most recently joining a $115 million investment in solar thermal firm BrightSource Energy. It now seems to be focusing its attention on the bustling geothermal energy sector, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently expressing a strong interest in Ormat, a geothermal startup headquartered in Reno, Nevada.

During an interview with the Israeli newspaper, The Marker, Brin confirmed that his company was in discussions with Ormat to collaborate on several clean energy projects, calling the startup a “great company” and praising it for its potential to turn geothermal energy “into a big business.” Though he wouldn’t say whether Google was in talks to purchase any Israeli cleantech companies, he did say that the conditions were good for his firm to buy companies in 2009. He said there were a lot of interesting companies that worked in renewable energy and electric cars — perhaps a nod to Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place.

According to Haaretz, senior executives at Google have already met with their counterparts from Ormat twice, and Larry Page recently visited one of the company’s plants in Steamboat Hills, Nevada. Ormat chairman Lucien Bronicki said he and Google officials were pushing legislation in the U.S. advocating more R&D for advanced geothermal technology. Ormat announced in February that it would work with the DOE and several geothermal companies — GeothermEx and Pinnacle Technologies — to test Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technology at its 11 megawatt Desert Peak facility.

The DOE has committed $1.6 million to support the project, which could eventually yield over 50 MW of power. The partnership will test hot fractured rock (HFR) technology to attempt to increase the output of its geothermal wells. Sydney, Australia-based Geodynamics, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, has been on the forefront with this technology and is nearing the completion of a 50 MW demonstration plant to supply up to 75,000 people by 2012.

Ormat has several existing projects in Guatemala, Kenya and Nicaragua is considered the world leader in geothermal energy.

In addition to making a series of high-profile investments in eSolar, BrightSource and Makani Power as part of its RE<C initiative, Google has also donated over $1 million in grants to support plug-in vehicle adoption. The foundation’s RechargeIT initiative recently gave $200,000 to CalCars.org. Page said Google.org’s goal is to produce 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity from wind, geothermal and solar thermal sources cheaper than coal, an objective he and Brin are optimistic will be met in years, rather than decades.

BrightSource Energy, an Oakland, Calif., solar thermal startup, has landed a hefty $115 million funding round from investors including Google to develop its solar power tower technology.

Solar thermal technology is one the leading hopes for alternative energy. It uses like mirrors and lenses to boil water, the steam of which is harnessed to generate electricity.

This third round was led by Google.org, VantagePoint Venture Partners, BP Alternative Energy, Statoil Hydro Venture and Black River; returning investors included DBL Investors, Draper Fischer Jurvetson and Chevron Technology Ventures. The company has now raised $160 million.

The company recently signed a massive contract with PG&E to supply it with up to 900 megawatts from its plants, whose construction will begin in 2009. Its Distributed Power Tower (DPT) technology is basically an array consisting of thousands of small mirrors, called heliostats, which concentrate sunlight on a single point — in this case, a boiler chamber mounted on top of the tower. Because its heliostats are able to follow the sun in two dimensions, BrightSource claims they are much more efficient than rival solar thermal technologies.

Each field of heliostats, dubbed a Solar Power Cluster (SPC), can produce 20 MW of solar power; a typical BrightSource power plant, made up of five SPCs, is therefore capable of generating up to 100 MW. To reach the 900 MW mark, the company plans on having one 100 MW plant up and running by 2011 and four 200 MW plants up by 2016.

Rivals Ausra, Solel and eSolar use similar technologies to produce electricity, though their specific designs differ. The latter, for example, uses flat mirrors in smaller groupings to produce up to 33 MW at a time –a practical strategy that allows the firm to plug directly into the existing grid and to eschew the burdensome process of obtaining permits. Costs will likely remain the biggest obstacle for these companies, but BrightSource, which is chaired by Arnold Goldman, a man with an extensive background in solar thermal, will be well positioned to handle them.

[See also: CNET Green Tech Blog

In the rapid rise of solar thermal power, a small handful of companies have grabbed the lion’s share of attention and funding: Ausra, Brightsource and Solel are the three most oft-heard names. Another company, eSolar, can now add its name to that shortlist, with one of the biggest cleantech venture fundings to date.

Notably, eSolar has plans to immediately funnel the money into construction projects that may see its plants going online ahead of its competitors’.

The solar thermal designs of all these companies involve using fields of mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight on contained water, which then boils and powers turbines. From that starting point everything can differ, from the size and shape of the mirrors to the type of receptacle containing the water and the location of the power plant.

ESolar’s trick is a minimalist design that uses small, flat mirrors in relatively modest deployments — the company is planning to build a series of plants producing 33 megawatts each, which is enough to power from 15,000 - 25,000 average Californian homes. Ausra, by contrast, is planning a 177MW plant in San Luis Obispo County, while Brightsource has a deal for five of about the same size.

Going smaller has several benefits for eSolar. The biggest is that the bureaucratic stumbling block of permitting is smoothed for plants under 50MW. Having smaller plants — they fit on about 160 acres of land — could also benefit eSolar by allowing it to nestle plants into areas that are closer to the regular transmission grid.

The size and speed with which they can be built means that eSolar could potentially have a plant up by the end of this year or early next. Most of its competitor’s earliest installations are scheduled for a year or so beyond that.

How far the $130 million investment will carry eSolar is another question. While the company boasts that it has a cheap manufacturing process and efficient designs, aided by software that intelligently aims the mirrors, building even small plants is still an expensive proposition. Despite the scale of Google.org (the search giant’s philanthropic arm) and Oak Investment Partners, eSolar will probably soon be shopping around for even larger amounts from banks and private equity.

Idealab, the third funder in the round, is also headed by eSolar’s chairman, Bill Gross. The company is based in Pasadena, Calif., and also took $10 million from Google.org in January.