VentureBeat

The problem with solar power is that it only works when the sun is shining. Once the sun goes down, there’s no more power. SolarReserve hopes to change that, with a design it says can store solar power at 99 percent efficiency.

SolarReserve’s basic technology is similar to that of other companies, including Ausra, Brightsource and eSolar. Called solar thermal power, it uses mirrors to reflect sunlight onto a centralized structure, in this case a tower. But where there’s usually a mix of water or oil absorbing the sun’s energies, SolarReserve uses molten salt.

Salt’s useful characteristic is that unlike water, which will expand to steam, it will remain in a liquid form even when brought to extremely high temperatures. This allows SolarReserve to easily store it in a reservoir, using its heat to generate electricity during hours when the sun is low.

Using melted salt has been one of the storage ideas that renewable energy proponents have been suggesting for years, but this is one of the first times that it has been put to practical use: SolarReserve intends to use its funding to help build out 5,000 megawatts of capacity, with its first plants coming online in a couple years.

It’s starting to look like energy storage for intermittent renewables (wind and solar) will be viable, taking the $20 million funding that Energy Storage and Power just received for its idea to compress air into caverns to later drive wind turbines alongside the SolarReserve funding. Both technologies offer a fairly economical way to mimic the benefits of conventional energy generation — 24 hour-a-day power.

The $140 million funding was led by Citi Sustainable Development Investments and Good Energies. They were joined by US Renewables Group, PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, Nimes Capital and Credit Suisse Customized Fund Investment Group. SolarReserve, based in Santa Monica, Calif., was spun out of United Technologies’ Rocketdyne division earlier this year.

Two days ago it was Optimal Technologies with $25 million toward software for electrical grids; today, it’s SmartSynch with $20 million for wirelessly communicating meters. I haven’t gone back and done an official count, but with well over half a dozen large fundings in the past few months, the efficiency-focused smart grid space looks to have emerged as the hot cleantech venture space du jour.

“Smart grid” is a catch-all term for a number of technologies that aim at measuring and controlling the process of sending electricity from generation plants to homes and businesses. The former area is SmartSynch’s specialty. The company’s meters are capable of hooking up to networks via any of several wireless standards like WiFi, CDMA or ZigBee to divulge the data they collect.

Fundings may be flooding in right now, but SmartSynch is no newbie. Founded in 2000, the company has taken $80 million to date. It has also deployed about 125,000 meters, and grew 125 percent last year. Meters have turned out to be a particularly bright area to innovate in, because they’re advantageous to several constituencies.

The advantage comes in giving more information to both customers and utilities. Instead of seeing electricity usage as one big block on a bill received once a month, customers can see usage on an almost moment-to-moment basis. Following the old adage “knowledge is power”, that information gives both parties the ability to plan out usage based on when electricity is most available, saving utilities power and both sides money.

SmartSynch’s chief technology officer, Henry Jones, says his firm’s communication technology, which is installed in meters made by Elster, General Electric and Itron, has brought in about $15 billion in additional revenues for utilities so far. That’s good news for the company, because it’s the utilities that buy and install the meters. Their customers include some rather large ones, including Socal Edison, Florida Power & Light, and Canada’s Hydro One.

Other firms, including Silver Spring Networks, have fairly similar technology and strategies. However, Jones claims that’s not a problem: Each firm has its own approach to communicating data, he says, and each approach is useful for different applications, leaving a wide market chunk for each competitor.

But that’s not much use to any new startups who might want to muscle in on the action. After all, several of these firms have years of lead time. So what are the next big opportunities? Jones thinks the next step is getting meters to report not just back to the utility, but also directly into the home or business they’re installed in; he says SmartSynch is preparing to release several meters that do just that.

Hooking into the gas and water meters is also a good opportunity, along with integrating the data from all three major utility streams. On a more granular level, there’s space for companies that measure and control electricity usage by specific devices, like air conditioners and lighting. And of course, there’s opportunity to be had not just in communication and control, but in helping to decipher all the information that’s being generated.

For the present moment, the wave of smart grid startups shows no sign of slackening. Several more announcements that I’m aware of are on their way in coming weeks, and a few in front usually means a pack behind.

The $25 million SmartSynch received was the Jackson, Miss., company’s fourth funding. Credit Suisse, a new investor, led the round, along with another newcomer, Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance (perhaps they’ll tack “venture partners” onto that name at some point). A heap of previous investors also came along for the ride: Batelle Ventures, Beacon Group, Endeavor Capital Management, GulfSouth Capital, Battelle’s affiliate Innovation Valley Partners, Kinetic Ventures, OPG Ventures and Siemens Venture Capital.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Acorn Cardio raises $22M for heart-failure device (bizjournals.com)
• Agile Therapeutics raises $5.6M for women’s health (release)
• Polyheal draws $1M for wound healing (Globes)
• MatrixBio receives seed funding for cancer diagnostics (release)
• Pacira Pharma names David Stack as CEO (release)
• VivoMetrics appoints Howard Baker as CEO (release)

Acorn Cardio raises $22M for heart-failure device – St. Paul, Minn.-based Acorn Cardiovascular, a device maker investigating a device that would restrain the expansion of failing hearts, raised $22 million in a new funding round. Investors included Cardinal Partners, Thoratec, SightLine Partners, Credit Suisse and New Enterprise Associates.

Acorn’s device, which it calls the CorCap, is a polyethylene mesh wrap that wraps around the heart, theoretically slowing or stopping the expansion that often occurs as hearts weaken and tire. The company sells the CorCap in Europe, but last year an FDA advisory panel recommended against approval of the device, throwing Acorn’s future into doubt until it reached an agreement with the FDA to conduct a new 50-patient trial. We previously covered Acorn’s travails and its primary venture competitor, the Sunnyvale, Calif., startup Paracor Medical, in this post.

Agile Therapeutics raises $5.6M for women’s health – Agile Therapeutics, a Princeton, N.J., specialty pharma focused on new contraceptives for women, raised $5.6 million in an extension of its fifth funding round, bringing the total for that round to $17.6 million. Investors in the round include the Hillman Company, ProQuest Investments, TL Ventures and Novitas Capital.

Agile’s lead product candidate is a low-dose estrogen patch for contraception, which is currently in mid-stage human trials. Agile suggests that the seven-day patch, which delivers steady doses of levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol, may help alleviate some side effects associated with high hormone exposure, such as breast tenderness, bloating or weight gain, and nausea.