VentureBeat

General Electric seems to be covering its bases when it comes to solar power. The company, which four months ago bought a controlling stake in thin-film solar panel maker PrimeStar Solar, has added concentrating solar to its portfolio with a $2.5 million bet on Soliant Energy, based in Monrovia, Calif.

The two startups are about as different as they come. Whereas thin-film solar, such as PrimeStar makes, is very low efficiency but dirt cheap, Soliant makes panels that focus the sun’s rays on a single point, providing the equivalent of 500 suns’ energy to tiny, high efficiency panels. That approach, predictably enough, costs far more per panel than thin film, although they may be competitive on the cost per watt of electricity.

Each scheme has its advantages, but it’s unclear yet whether thin film, concentrating solar or traditional silicon-based solar photovoltaics will win a majority share of the solar market. Soliant, for its part, has been around longer than some concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) companies. We first covered it in 2006, when it was still called Practical Instruments and had just raised $8 million to help develop its panels.

Nowadays it has plenty of competition, from a slew of companies including GreenVolts, Sunrgi and SolFocus, the last of which recently edged close to $100 million in funding. Soliant’s not quite there yet, but its product is at least completed and has some notable differences to other CPV panels on the market. The company fits a number of lenses and mirrors into a nearly flat array, providing a lightweight setup.

However, like almost all CPV systems, Soliant requires a dual-axis tracking system to keep its panels aimed at the sun, so don’t expect to see the units on home rooftops. Instead, they can be installed on commercial roofs or on the ground. Next year, the company will open its first plant, making 40 megawatts worth of panels annually.

The $2.5 million that GE Energy Financial Services provided is part of a larger $21 million round the Convexa Capital, Rockport Capital Partners, Nth Power, Trinity Ventures and Rincon Venture Partners are also taking part in. Soliant is based in Monrovia, Calif.

Here’s the latest action:

Google’s search-within-search bugs some publishers — Apparently some folks such as the Washington Post aren’t looking too kindly on a feature Google added earlier this month, which lets people search within publications like the Post directly from Google. The feature lets you search for a publication on Google, for instance the Post or other sites like Wikipedia, The New York Times, and Wal-Mart, and then gives you a secondary search bar to search within those sites. Here’s the rub: If you search the Washington Post from that bar for say, “jobs,” you’ll see results for the Post’s employment pages, but also ads nearby for competing job sites like CareerBuilder and Monster.com. The NYT has the story.

Modu, a company with a module that can be inserted into various wireless devices, raises $100 million — The Israeli company is expected to close the round within the “next few weeks,” according to the Globes, which also says the company is valued at a significant $150 million before the investment. The company has raised $20 million to date from Genesis Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, SanDisk and founder Dov Moran. The company is making modular hardware products built around its tiny module, a phone-MP3 device that can morph into different functions depending on the cellular device it is snapped into; there’s a video here (or just see below).

Sun gets $44M contract from Pentagon’s DARPA to replace chip wires with laser beams –The wiring between processors on a chip is one of the biggest bottlenecks to increased efficiency in semiconductors. Sun has beat out Intel, IBM, MIT and HP on a government contract to figure out how to use silicon photonics, or light beams, to make chips faster and more efficient.

Will Fed make taxpayers pay more for Bear Stearns? — Shareholders of Bear Stearns, a third of which are Bear Stearns’ own employees, were so upset by the deal to bail out Bear Stearns at the low price of $2 per share that they’ve revolted and are pushing for a higher price of $10 per share. This is the bank that got caught up in the worst excesses of the subprime bubble, was apparently literally gambling while the ship sank and refused to participate in bailing out other companies (Long-Term Capital Management) in the past. So why would the Fed and JPMorgan want to make taxpayers pay the higher price to bail these guys out?

Search arbitrage company Geosign disintegrates after receiving record $160M investment last year – The Canadian company’s saga shows the danger of trying to use an arbitrage strategy with Google’s ads. It was buying Google keywords and sending people to landing pages with Yahoo ads on them. When Google found out about the trick, it changed its terms and shut off Geosign’s ability to conduct its arbitrage. The company’s business model disintegrated. American Capital, the lead investor in the company last year, is looking pretty foolish. Why make an investment in a company that isn’t producing anything of sustainable value? We reported on the company here last year when it raised the money.

The X Prize Foundation offers $10 million to team that produces vehicles that can get 100 miles per gallon or more — Details here. The winning cars must carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. Qualifiers also must have four or more wheels, reach 100 mph, and reach 60 mph in 12 seconds and have a range of 200 miles.

Battery companies LionCells and Seeo raise cash — Seeo, of Berkeley, Calif., has raised nearly $1 million in capital from Khosla Ventures, to make safe, high-density batteries. This comes after the company (which doesn’t have a web site) took in $1 million last year, according to a California regulatory document cited by VentureWire. Last month, another company, Menlo Park’s Lion Cells, which makes high-power lithium ion batteries, raised approximately $12 million, according to the SEC. Battery Ventures and Nth Power participated in the second round, according to the filing.

GotVoice, the speech-to-text company, now wants to raise money too — Perhaps jolted by the announcement last week that competitor SpinVox raised $100 million in a carrier land-grab for its own speech-to-text technology, GotVoice is now saying it too wants to raise financing. To give it more time, the Kirkland, Wash. company has raised a $1.78 million “bridge round” of funding to supplement the $3 million in raised in 2006 from Ignition and other individual investors, according to VentureWire.

Silicon Valley venture firm Morgenthaler Ventures raising funds — The venture capital firm is trying to raise another fund, totaling about $400 million, but VentureWire reports that the firm’s 2001 fund is below median in its performance and suggests investors are on the fence on the firm, founded in the 1960s.

With a fresh $32 million funding going to nanotechnoloy firm NanoGram, mainly for development of next-generation solar cells, it’s a good time to point out some up-and-coming technologies that work on very small scales to make photovoltaic cells more efficient.

NanoGram has already had several commercial successes, including inventions in both electronics and medicine. However, the company has of late turned its sights on boosting the efficiency of solar cells.

The company is working on ultra-thin crystalline silicon which it says will reduce the cost of silicon-based solar cells to below $1 per watt hour, a price point that is generally considered a breakthrough.

Its latest funding is notable because Nanogram had so far only taken $27 million in funding since its inception in 1996, growing to over $20 million in annual revenue. It plans to use the additional $32 million (investor details at bottom) in part toward a pilot plant for solar modules.

SunFlake A/S, a European company, makes the same claim of being able to manufacture a low-cost cell with about 30 percent efficiency, roughly double the efficiency of the average solar cell available today.

Headed by noted scientist Martin Aagesen, the company plans to make use of a type of nanowire discovered by Aagesen that he calls “nanoflakes.” Blessed with a perfect crystalline structure, nanoflakes are capable of absorbing nearly all light directed at them, according to the company.

By growing its nanowires into a low-grade silicon substrate, SunFlake will reduce the need for large amounts of high-quality polysilicon when making cells. However, it has yet to announce plans to commercially manufacture cells.

Another methods on the horizon is the use of metal oxide nanoparticals in cells. Dr. Jin Zhang of the University of California, Santa Cruz, plans to use a combination of nanoparticles and quantum dots (using nano-crystals, as SunFlake does) to make a highly efficient solar cell.

(Nanotechnology, by the way, refers the field of science that works at the atomic and molecular scale, roughly between 1 to 100 nanometers. Elements and compounds take on different characteristics when they are so tiny, and studying them is leading to new users and inventions, as we’re seeing here.)

A team led by Zhang and including other researchers from China and Mexico recently tested a prototype cell using a nanocomposite material of their own devising. The cell performed even better than the researchers expected.

“We’re manipulating the energy levels of the nanocomposite material so the electrons can work more efficiently for electricity generation,” Zhang told ScienceDaily. His research is currently supported by various governmental groups from the three countries involved.

One note when considering these up-and-coming technologies: It will probably be about five years before they hit the market in force. However, as new technologies become more common, existing cost balances between different solar technologies, like polysilicon and CIGS cells, will likely be upset.

Finally, returning to NanoGram’s funding, the company brought on new investors Global Cleantech Capital, Masdar Clean Tech Fund, Mitsui Ventures, Nagase & Company, Nanostart AG, TEL Venture Capital, and Yasuda Enterprise Development for the round. Existing investors ATA Ventures, Bay Partners, Harris & Harris, Institutional Venture Partners, Nth Power, Rockport Capital Partners, SBV Venture Partners, and Technology Partners also participated.

(Update: The cash raised was $5.8 million, according to a regulatory filing at the SEC)

Terrapass, a Menlo Park, Calif. company that lets people calculate the greenhouse gas emissions caused by daily activities such as driving, and then pay to offset them, has raised another round of funding.

Despite no prior backing, the company is growing very quickly, now boasting 50,000 adherents. It has become a leader of the movement to go “carbon neutral,” a trend is gaining adherents elsewhere, including big companies. Both Google and Yahoo, for example want to be carbon neutral. Google is installing a solar power grid to reach that goal. Yahoo recently launched Yahoo Green as part of a similar initiative.

TerraPass charges individuals $29.95 per year or more for “Terrapasses,” depending on their lifestyle. Maveron, of Seattle, led the round, Nth Power, of San Francisco. It also brought on a new chief executive, Erik Blachford, the former CEO of Expedia, and who has also invested in TerrPass. John Cook, of the Seattle PI, has more on Blachford’s move. He is just the latest in a trickle of executives moving to clean-tech (See Amy Vernetti’s VentureBeat column today about this trend).

Terrapass is a six-person startup. The 50,000 number is up from 30,000 earlier this year, and 2,000 last year, when we first mentioned the company. It is making more than $1 million a year. Jay Parkhill most recently mentioned the company in a VentureBeat column about the sector.

Terrapass says it reduces emissions in a number of ways, such as helping with landfill capping and supporting wind power projects. It says that its audited to make sure its methods are sounds. Here’s more about how it works.

Competing services include NativeEnergy and Carbon Fund.

Some critics have emerged, however, saying that these services are essentially offering a license for people to pollute more. They cite examples of carbon neutral companies buying up emissions created by oil extraction projects, thus seemingly making more oil pumping more palatable — but ironically, justifying more of it.

Ok, you’ve heard versions this headline before: “Investments in clean technologies doubled last year, compared to the year before.”

So far, definitions of clean technology have remained vague, and we’ve remained suspicious about the accuracy of industry data on investments in this area.

Today, Dow Jones Venture One has released a more precise definition of what “clean technology.” Earlier, the group also tightened the definition of “Web 2.0″ investments, which greatly improved upon previous efforts.

In 2006, venture investors pumped $1.28 billion into clean technology companies in China, Europe, Israel and the U.S., the group said today. That’s about double the $664.1 million invested in 2005, according to the research, which was compiled the data with help from Ernst & Young.

And here’s their definition:

Because of the significant level of attention being focused on cleantech, VentureOne’s research department adopted a strict methodology for categorizing potential companies in this new industry. They were defined as companies that directly enable the efficient use of natural resources and reduce the ecological impact of production. Areas of focus include energy, water, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing where the technology creates less waste or toxicity. The impact of cleantech can be either to provide superior performance at lower costs or to limit the amount of resources needed while maintaining comparable productivity levels.

The most active global investors in cleantech in 2006 include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Element, Khosla Ventures, Nth Power and Rockport Capital Partners.

See more info in the table below:

Updated

Practical Instruments has raised $8 million in a first round of funding to develop what it says is the most powerful solar “concentration” technology yet.

It uses solar panels that track the sun as it moves. The panels use mirrors to concentrate the sunlight for the photovoltaic process, thereby boosting performance.

It is the latest in a wave of entrants in the booming solar power industry, and will compete against a number of other “concentration” companies, including Energy Innovations, SolFocus and Solaria. It will be presenting its technology at the Solar Power 2006 expo in San Jose this week. (See summary of the solar wave in the Mercury News today.)

RockPort Capital Partners and Nth Power led the venture capital round. Trinity Ventures and Rincon Venture Partners also participated.

The wave of solar funding joins a wider boom in alternative energy investments: In just the last few days, we’ve seen solar monitoring start-up Fat Spaniel, power management company iWatt, biofuel start-up Primafuel (Long Beach, Calif.) and biofuel start-up Amyris all raise new financing.

Practical Instruments chief executive Brad Hines said he is taking a different tack than the other solar competitors. Two years ago, Hines left competitor Energy Innovations, which users a similar tracking technology. But that technology was early and the panels required “tower” and other support structures that created panels different to those the industry was familiar with, Hines said. As a result, the company struggled to create what is effectively its own distribution channel. While Energy Innovations boasted a good concentration technology, installers didn’t know what to do with it, he said. (We wrote about Energy Innovations here last year, when it raised venture capital. We contacted Energy Innovations President Andrew Beebe for a response to Hines’ critique; he declined comment).

So Hines, who was also a “chief architect” at NASA, founded Practical Instruments (see team in picture) with the goal of making panels that are the same shape as regular solar panels. He also pledges they will cost less and produce more power. The company’s panels can produce 30 percent more power for a given area than the current leaders, he says. However, the company hasn’t started delivering its product or set pricing yet, so we’ll see if he pulls this off.

The company’s technology resides on the rooftop, and so can be installed on more buildings than, say SolFocus, which requires a ground mounting and is more focused on serving utilities, he said.

Solaria, another company we’ve written about, has raised money for panels with concentration technology — but its technology does not use tracking, and so it’s limited to only two to three times the regular concentration of sunlight on the solar cells. Practical Instruments see concentration levels of about ten times regular concentration.

The investment will fund the production of Practical Instruments’ flagship product, Heliotube, the company said.