Green Tech

A new wind-power machine has been inspired by a centuries-old idea: Persian "wind catchers."

Windation Energy Systems, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based start-up, has developed a wind appliance that looks more or less like the modern heating and cooling equipment you see on flat corporate building rooftops.

Windation's appliance looks more like an HVAC machine than a turbine.

(Credit: Windation)

There's a 8-by-8-foot frame around a 10-foot-high cylinder. Wind blows in the top and is directed to the bottom where the wind turns a turbine to make up to 5 kilowatts of electricity. A single unit wouldn't generate enough power for an entire office building but could offset a significant portion, the company says.

Windation CEO and founder, Mark Sheikhrezai, who is originally from Iran, said he was inspired by ancient Persian buildings that use air currents and reservoirs of water to cool buildings. Using differences in air pressure, these wind catcher buildings create a steady flow of air without any mechanical devices.

Although Windation's wind appliance does draw air from the top like these buildings, Sheikhrezai said he used his expertise in centrifuges and rotors to manipulate the movement of the wind to generate electricity.

The overall design breaks with that of other small wind turbines, which tend to look a lot more like wind turbines.

Aerovironment's wind turbines, now installed in a few locations, are essentially miniature wind turbines perched on the edges of buildings. Another approach is the vertical axis turbine from Mariah Power.

Sheikhrezai said one of the biggest advantages of Windation's appliance is its shape and ease of installation. Since all moving parts are contained, there isn't potential danger to birds, bats, or people, he noted.

Financially, an investment in a 5-kilowatt appliance, which comes with its own inverter, recoups the installation cost of $45,000 to $50,000 in five to seven years, he said. Depending on the wind or sun resource, a wind machine could deliver a quicker payback than installing a solar array on commercial flat-top roof, he asserted.

The urban wind appliance from Windation is inspired by Persian wind catchers that used naturally occurring air movements and water to cool buildings.

(Credit: Wikipedia)

The units will work well with what's called "dirty wind," or gusty, inconsistent wind, Sheikhrezai said.

"Cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Cleveland--places you wouldn't think--are all good wind places," he said.

The company is set to install one unit at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California and plans to begin manufacturing more units for delivery in February. It then intends to ramp up manufacturing in the following two years. The product will be made in old windmill factory in Nebraska.

Windation, which formed last year, is looking to raise up to $5 million in the next two years and then raise another $20 million for further expansion, Sheikhrezai said.

Small wind turbines are poised for more growth in light of the recently passed economic recovery act. The federal law includes a tax credit of up to $4,000 for small wind turbines, which the mayors of New York City and San Francisco have endorsed for city buildings.

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

• U.N.: Financial chills are ill wind for climate--Associated Press
  The Kyoto Protocol is structured around investing in projects that clean up pollution, often in developing countries. Without active financing, that could slow dramatically, says a U.N. negotiator.
• What to expect from cleantech in the downturn--VentureBeat
  Further parsing the economic downturn from a start-up/VC perspective.
• Biofuels are here to stay: What to do about food supply?--Gas 2.0
  The beginning of a difficult but important discussion on how to make more food for a growing population and to continue on the biofuels trajectory.

A 2-megawatt power-generating parking lot at Applied Materials.
(Credit: Applied Materials)
• Schwarzenegger: Solar and other clean-technologies are a bright spot in dark economy--San Jose Mercury News
  California governor talks up clean, green technologies at the dedication of a 2-megawatt installation at Applied Materials.
• Ericsson attaches blades for wind power to base station--IDG News Service
  Innovative way to integrate wind power.
• Renault, EDF go electric in France--Greentech Media
  French industrial policy at work: a partnership between auto maker and electric utility to create a car-charging infrastructure in two years.
• McCain and Obama's energy proposals--Associated Press
  Bullet-pointed list. For more, go here.
• 2 endorsements of nuclear power, but sharp differences on details--New York Times
  Delve into the details of both candidates' stance on nuclear power.
• Fuel cell start-up CTP runs out of gas--Mass High Tech
  Not to read too much into one small company's failure, but it's a sign that: 1. the hydrogen economy is more talk than practice and 2. energy start-ups that don't hit their goals will run out of funding.

Even with the teetering economy, solar companies are bullish that tapping free energy from the sun is a solid financial move.

SkyFuel, a company spun out of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), on Friday is hosting an event to unveil its solar power plant system: a parabolic trough made from reflective plastic. Colorado Gov. Bill Rittner will speak at the event, held at SkyFuel's research center in Arvada, Colo.

SkyFuel's parabolic trough, made with reflective plastic rather than mirrored glass, a design which it says lowers the overall cost.

(Credit: SkyFuel)

Parabolic troughs have been around for decades and are considered the incumbent technology in concentrating solar thermal power plants, which are suited for hot desert climates like in Spain and the U.S. southwest.

Reflective troughs concentrate sunlight onto a liquid which is converted to steam, which turns a power generator.

SkyFuel's enhancement on the basic shape is a trough that uses silver encased in plastic, rather than mirrored glass. Although silver is certainly an expensive material, using plastic cuts down on the overall cost, according to Chris Huntington, vice president of business development at SkyFuel.

He said that the cost of an installed solar power plant using its equipment is about 25 percent less than existing parabolic troughs.

The company estimates that it can deliver electricity at about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's in the range of the other solar thermal technologies, but still more than a natural gas or coal power plant.

Several solar thermal companies have sprouted up in the past five years, with different designs such as Ausra's Fresnel lens glass reflectors or eSolar solar power tower.

Demand is driven by state-level renewable portfolio standards. Utilities in California, for example, need to purchase 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

Huntington said the company expects to have a small installation of its SkyFuel system--on the order of 2 to 10 megawatts in size--in the next year and then larger installations after those pilots.

Having a less cutting-edge design than other firms is an advantage in a tight funding market, Huntington said.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of different concentrating solar technologies.

(Credit: Ausra)

"The cost of borrowing is going up everywhere and there will be a tighter credit market. But if any money is going to be spent on CSP (concentrating solar power) plants in the near future, I think it's going to be on tried-and-true systems like the parabolic trough," he said.

The company is already working on the second generation product that will include storage through a Department of Energy grant. It probably won't be commercially available for at least three years, Huntington said.

Rather than heat up oil or hot water, the parabolic troughs will heat up tubes of molten salt. That salt can be stored to make electricity even after the sun goes down.

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

• Konarka opens world's largest roll-to-roll thin-film solar manufacturing facility with 1 gigawatt nameplate capacity - Press release
  After many years of development, Konarka boosts production of plastic solar cells it wants to embed in everything from cell phone chargers to more solid clothing.
• Blowing offshore power into Oregon - Greentech Media
  Seems like a wind company to watch. Principle Power makes, among other things, off-shore wind turbines using three-legged supports.
• Mascoma announces $49.5 million in DOE and state of Michigan funding for cellulosic fuel facility - Press release
  Here's one way clean-tech start-ups will scale up: government incentives. Michigan lures Mascoma to build a plant to make ethanol from wood chips.
• The failing business of conservation - NYTimes.com
  NYT's newish Green Inc. blog features a report from World Conservation Congress in which experts tell environmentalists to better understand business and learn how to motivate people.
• Green TECHpulse, multicultural market research, multiclient study analysis - Press release
  A survey of businesses and consumers shows strong interest in buying green.
• Test driving the all-electric mini-car - Greentech Media
  Kanellos tries the Tango (already purchased by George Clooney), an all-electric car with room for one driver in front and a person behind that zooms from 0 to 60 in four seconds.

When it comes to energy policy, both presidential candidates want carbon regulations, better efficiency, and more renewable energy. The biggest differences lie in emphasis--drilling, nuclear energy--and what role the federal government should play.

During the second presidential debate on Tuesday, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama both cited the need for more clean, or green, technologies to reduce the country's oil consumption and address climate change.

On Monday night, a separate debate focused specifically on energy policy was hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Former CIA chief and clean-tech investor R. James Woolsey represented the McCain camp. Jason Grumet, founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center, spoke for the Obama side.

Both events provide a bit more clarity on what the candidates might do, once in office.

During the presidential debate (transcript) on Tuesday, energy was a frequent topic and tightly linked to a hoped-for economic recovery around new energy industries.

McCain once again came out strongly for rapidly expanding domestic offshore drilling and a massive build-out of nuclear power.

In response to a question about climate change, McCain touted his early commitment to the issue, plus a climate change bill he proposed with Sen. Joe Lieberman. The bill ultimately failed to become law.

"Now, how--what's--what's the best way of fixing (climate change)? Nuclear power," he said.

Later, McCain said the United States should have a more diverse set of energy sources:

"We can work on nuclear-power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs. We have to have all of the above: alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean-coal technology. All of these things we can do as Americans, and we can take on this mission, and we can overcome it."

In the Tuesday debate, Obama came out stronger on nuclear energy than he has in the past, according to FactCheck.org. He also agreed with McCain on the need for more domestic drilling but noted that the United States holds a small percentage of the world's oil reserves and that the country "can't drill our way out of the oil problem."

Obama's response to the climate change question:

"It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge; it's an opportunity because if we create a new energy economy, we can create 5 million new jobs, easily, here in the United States. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment.

Digging one level down
Unlike the sharp attacks in the presidential and vice-presidential debates, Monday's debate on energy policy at MIT with Woolsey and Grumet was more congenial.

On the whole, Grumet cited planks from Obama's detailed energy plan, which the Illinois senator unveiled earlier this year. Woolsey spoke in broad strokes on McCain's energy plan, as well as on his criticisms of Obama's plan.

"What we have here, with some exceptions, are two responsible energy programs," Woolsey said. "Centralization and central control is a difference here."

McCain adviser James Woolsey argues a point while Obama adviser Jason Grumet listens during an MIT-hosted debate on energy policy.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Woolsey cited examples of the federal government favoring energy-related technologies, or companies in research projects, that failed.

Grumet's criticism of the McCain plan is that it lacked enough information to truly judge. He said its "drill, baby, drill" slogan is focused on the past, not the future.

Another difference is McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate. Palin has touted her experience in introducing more competition into oil and gas company operations in Alaska.

"Sen. McCain's assertion that his vice president, Gov. Palin, would be handling energy policy in this country is a profound difference because Sen. Obama would make this a personal priority," Grumet said, adding that an Obama presidency would respect the scientific process when making environmental policy.

McCain
When describing McCain's policy, Woolsey said the top item is a cap-and-trade program in which large polluters such as utilities would need to purchase pollution rights, which can be bought and sold.

McCain supports a transition to alcohol fuels such as ethanol, as well as battery-powered cars, to replace oil as the fuel for transportation. He has proposed a $300 million contest for the best electric-car battery.

He has called for the construction of 45 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years--a goal that Woolsey admitted is difficult to achieve.

Woolsey said Obama's plan is more detailed. But he said that reflects the overall philosophy of McCain, who intends to give states leeway to implement policy.

"Sen. McCain believes in general direction," he said. "It should stick to a general direction, such as cap and trade, and leave the detailed manifestations of standards and so forth--which type of renewable fuels and so on--up to local decision making."

Obama
At the federal level, Grumet said Obama supports a renewable portfolio standard, a mandate already in place in several states that would require utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind, or geothermal by 2025.

On fuels, he said the U.S. should adopt a low-carbon standard, in which ethanol and biodiesel are measured on the total carbon emissions, from production to consumption. Corn ethanol has been criticized because its net carbon emissions are similar to gasoline, while ethanol from wood chips, grasses, or wastes is better in that regard.

Obama has proposed spending $15 billion per year for 10 years on energy programs, such as efficiency and research. This would be paid for by auctioning polluting rights in a federal cap-and-trade carbon emissions regime. Grumet also said Obama believes that scaling back subsidies to oil companies should help fund clean-energy industries.

"We have to pull these technologies forward with neutral performance standards, like a renewable portfolio standard that doesn't say how you have to make low-carbon energy. But it does say that you must make it. And we have to support those regulations with significant incentives," Grumet said.

As part of the recently passed bailout bill, subsidies for renewable energy were extended at the last minute. The law renews tax credits for solar power for eight years and for wind for one year. Also included is a tax credit for people who purchase a plug-in vehicle, an idea that both candidates had previously backed.

The Army plans to install a 500-megawatt solar thermal power farm at a Fort Irwin, Calif., base as part of its bid to reduce a $3 billion annual energy bill, spent mostly on installations.

Nellis Air Force Base solar panels.

(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Larry E. Reid Jr.)

The Mojave Desert plant would feed electricity to the grid by 2014 for savings of $21 million and 4,015,000 tons of carbon dioxide over 25 years. Construction is set to begin in 2012.

The Army's solar thermal system would eclipse the 14 megawatts at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, the largest U.S. solar photovoltaic installation.

"By making greater use of alternative and renewable energy, Army initiatives will bring energy savings and security to the Army, reducing the risk of power disruption," said Keith Eastin, the Army's assistant secretary for Installations & Environment, who is charged with reporting the progress of energy projects to Army Secretary Pete Geren.

The solar project is close to the scale of the 550 megawatts planned to come online by 2013 by OptiSolar of Hayward, Calif., for what would be the world's largest thin-film photovoltaic plant. Utility Pacific Gas & Electric inked a deal with that company in August to use electricity from the target site in San Luis Obispo County.

The Army's Monday announcement came as it establishes an energy council to advance a collection of projects, including:

• A joint geothermal initiative with the Navy to provide 30 megawatts at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev., by 2012.
• Biomass-to-fuel demonstrations at six Army posts: Forts Benning and Stewart in Georgia; Fort AP Hill, Va.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; and Fort Lewis, Wash. A one-year test will begin in 2008. Waste for potential conversion for use as diesel or jet fuel would come from wood and grass clippings and cardboard.
• Plans to buy 4,000 electric vehicles for maintenance and operations at Army posts, replacing 800 petroleum-powered vehicles. The Army aims to phase in the vehicles over three years, reducing the use of more than 11 million gallons of fossil fuel.

To get under the hood of transportation technology, just talk to John Heywood.

Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues took the proverbial big-picture view of transportation in a recent report on how the U.S. could slash gasoline usage by 2035.

John Heywood, MIT professor and transportation technology expert

(Credit: MIT)

Looking at the pace of technology development and the market "pull" of consumers, the report tries to sort out dead ends from more promising routes.

MIT's report concludes there's great potential for transportation technology. If lightweight hybrids and plug-in hybrids, for example, were the primary vehicle by 2035, the U.S. fleet would use about half the fuel it currently uses, helping significantly lower greenhouse gas levels.

Battery-powered cars aren't the only route to reinventing cars. Biofuels are touted as a gasoline replacement but are coming under more fire for financial and environmental reasons.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles remain the elusive prize--technically elegant yet stubbornly hard to make commercial and environmentally sustainable.

Meanwhile, smaller cars would go a long way to efficiency but automakers tend to build bigger and bigger cars, responding to consumer demand.

CNET News spoke to Heywood about the best transportation options for consumers and the country. For individuals, he says, our choices matter--buy fuel-efficient cars and don't drive aggressively if you'd like to clean up your ride.

But when it comes to big changes in transportation, he says that policies that encourage consumers to buy "green" are the only way to truly transform the nation's fleet.

Q: It seems the big conclusion from your report is that there are multiple pathways to cleaner transportation but it's not necessarily going to be easy to improve efficiency?
Heywood: You're right, there are a number of options. They haven't happened already because they cost extra to improve the efficiency of vehicles. And in a sense, the bigger the improvement the more the cost--does it pay off? Issues like this have slowed down our progress in the past.

Then there are some behavioral issues that are sometimes built into the system: We all like cars that are more fun to drive. More fun gets translated into more powerful (heavier) cars, so the market pulls ever-more powerful cars. The industry competes on providing the next car that's more powerful than the last one. That's been very detrimental to using better technology to directly reduce fuel consumption.

Do you get the feeling that there's a real push among at least a significant portion of consumers for more fuel-efficient cars? I'm not sure if people are willing to give up big cars necessarily, but do you get the sense that consumers and the industry are committed to more efficient technologies?
Heywood: Well, everybody wants it. The challenge is it doesn't come free. I have lots of discussions with friends and the broader public, and they ask, why don't cars get 50 miles per gallon? Well, you can have 50-mile-per-gallon cars, but they don't look like the cars that most people have been buying over the last few years, for example, because the bigger, the heavier, the more fuel it's going to consume to drive in the way that we want to drive. So there's sort of constrained opportunities, and that's what we have trouble relating to.

An MIT study lays out which technologies have the potential to be the most fuel efficient.

(Credit: MIT)

Looking at all the constrained opportunities, which one seems like the easiest path to go down--just improving existing engines versus plug-in hybrids versus clean diesel, etc.?
Heywood: We're seeing evidence right now as petroleum prices have gone way up over the last six months to a year. We've seen that what the buying public is doing is shifting down the size spectrum. So the really big vehicles, the sales are down significantly. At the small end with smaller vehicles, the demand is up significantly. There's a long waiting list for the limited number of hybrids that are now available. So that will start to pull bigger numbers for existing hybrid vehicles and pull new hybrid models into the market. The auto companies are scrambling to both improve standard engine transmissions and also to develop some of these alternatives that are significantly more efficient.

There's also a weight reduction from the vehicle by substituting lighter materials. The more use of aluminum instead of steel or high-strength steel instead of standard steel, you get some useful weight reductions. That takes a bit longer because it's got to be designed into the vehicles.

So lots of things can happen at different time scales--and then very long-term ideas like plug-in hybrids where we share the energy used for driving with electricity. And, of course, the hydrogen economy is being worked on seriously, but its implementation is still some ways away.

Your report said that biofuels would play a smaller role than anticipated. Why did you find that?
Heywood: Land availability is a constraint. How rapidly can we build (biofuels production) up? Can we distribute these alternative fuels so that we could use them?

When we look at the numbers from a couple of years ago when legislation was written setting some very ambitious targets, we're really not going to beat those targets on that time frame. Now, that's not to say that biofuels won't develop, and I think they will play a useful role overtime--they're one of the few options, real options that we've got. But we've got to be very careful about the environmental impacts and unintended economic impacts of how we go about it.

So do you think this national goal of getting one third of our liquid fuel needs provided by biofuels by mid-century is too high?
Heywood: Well, I'm not going to say no because if you go mid-century that's a long ways away. I think in a nearer-term sense--say going out 25 years instead of 40 to 50 years, 20 percent, maybe 25 percent (from biofuels) that may well develop. Not guaranteed, but I think that looks plausible and maybe it can go beyond that, particularly if you think of this developing in a global sense.

There has been a dispute whether plug-in hybrids are a technology that will scale. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla says that because they're too expensive, they'll never be used in large numbers outside of rich countries. What's your view on the roles of plug-in hybrids?
Heywood: Well, he's got a valid point. The batteries as we currently see them--even allowing for some development--are going to be expensive. In a plug-in hybrid you need a lot more battery so the incremental cost of that battery, which will depend on the electric range which you want, is going to be significant.

Depending on the cost of fuels that may well pay for itself over the life of the vehicle, but will that be 15 years from now, 20 years from now? We'll be doing that kind of economic calculation much more carefully than we're doing it today at the individual vehicle level.

I think that there is a broad trend of increasing electrification of our energy system, and using electricity and transportation in this way certainly does cut back on petroleum use significantly. So I think it's got a lot of drivers pushing it in the right direction. Now it's going to depend on how quickly can we pull the battery costs down. There's a good shot at making these sensible total economic packages, but it's not guaranteed.

If it's a couple of thousand dollars extra to share the energy between petroleum and electricity, that's likely to be an attractive proposition. If it's $5,000 extra, then that's not as good, and if it's more than that, that's fairly worse.

What policies need to be put in place to promote these new technologies?
Heywood: Our recommendation was that these changes need to be incentivized in some way. Now we've put in some strict CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards that are going to force the industry to move as rapidly as they can and improve the fuel consumption of their vehicles. Those targets are surprisingly aggressive--they're not as easy to realize as the broader public imagines.

I think that there are a number of reasons why over time this country needs a transition to taxing energy consumption in useful ways that motivate people to be more efficient in the technologies that they buy and then how they use these technologies.

If you do tax fuels, it's a revenue source for improving our roadway infrastructure, which is in strong need of reversing the downward slide in terms of its deterioration. And then (that would pay for) even providing some additional aspects to the infrastructure that would improve its capability of having people move with less congestion and save energy that way.

I also think that a fee and rebate system (where consumers get a rebate for buying an efficient car) at the time of purchase motivates vehicle purchasers to pay attention to the fuel economy.

I just happen to have gone through some car buying lately. It's really hard to hang onto your toughness. When you look at all the other things that matter about a car and the other things that we like about cars, it is really hard to hang onto the more stringent stuff that is indeed going to matter. But it gets pushed into the background a bit at time of sale.

Someone would come back and say if you put more taxes on gasoline consumption it's people who are hurting economically who will be further disadvantaged. What's the response to that?
Heywood: One can recycle some of that back to the tax system if one takes an appropriate but thoughtful view of this issue that you've raised.

I'm not saying I know the answer, but I think our strong point is that there are significant opportunities but they need incentivizing. If you want to take the last 25 years, there has been better technology in U.S. vehicles. Performance of vehicles has escalated enormously. Size and weight have gone up significantly and fuel consumption stayed roughly constant. Now, you can say, that's because gasoline was cheap. Fair enough, but if we just rely on "the market," the last 20 years of the market hasn't helped this.

How do you think hydrogen vehicles will evolve? Will they be a niche market?
Heywood: Fuel cells though are very different (from hybrids) and they're going to need a brand-new fuel infrastructure--hydrogen--and it's not easy to put that in. So I don't think they're a niche market. They will get out in some limited fleet testing. But whether it starts to take off in a serious way towards big time depends a lot on whether we see good ways to produce hydrogen that fit our future energy strategies much better. There are lots of questions, people working hard on these questions, but it's going to hover at the modest level for quite awhile before we get a sense of whether this is ready for big time.

You've been advocating for better fuel economy and less polluting vehicles for quite some time. What's your level of optimism right now?
Heywood: Well, I think we are going in the right direction. This period where the prices of oil is high--and I think it may go down some, but it's not going to go down to pretty high levels--that will continue to motivate people to shift what they do.

But it's harder than we think it is to realize on these opportunities and particularly to realize on them in a very broad way, to make the nation's fuel consumption go down. The fleet is growing all the time because the population is growing. So, I think we've got to work very hard to try and incentivize the steps that we have outlined and others have outlined.

This is going to be a hell of a problem to sort out and really make progress on, particularly if you look to what reductions in greenhouse gases people are looking for by mid-century. I mean those are very, very aggressive and ambitious targets (and) they may well be necessary. So there's lots of action in the near-term and the midterm and we really need some good ideas for the long-term.

Solyndra, a start-up making thin-film photovoltaic systems, has secured $600 million in funding.

It's additionally secured $1.2 billion in contracts from clients in the U.S. and Europe, the Fremont, Calif.-based company revealed Tuesday.

What start-up gets that kind of funding and client promise? Basically, one that's invented thin-film solar panels shaped like old-school fluorescent lightbulbs.

Solyndra's series of tubes offer a unique angle on solar power.

(Credit: Solyndra)

Since 2005, Solyndra has quietly been developing a proprietary CIGS-based thin film photovoltaic (PV) system and a staff of more than 500 employees.

CIGS is a material that includes a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide. It's now being used by quite a number of companies to make thin-film solar cells among other things.

Solyndra's cylindrical PV panels don't have to be spaced to leave room for rotation toward the sun as with flat solar panels. The panels are actually rows of cylindrical tubes which are installed horizontally and close to one another.

The tubes can "capture sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface capable of converting direct, diffuse, and reflected sunlight into electricity," according to Solyndra.

Solyndra panels consist of tubes that can absorb sunlight from all angles.

(Credit: Solyndar)

The company also says that because of this unique shape and mounting system, more productive solar surface area can be packed onto one roof than with conventionally shaped panels. Subsequently, its system is able to generate "significantly more solar electricity on an annual basis" compared with flat panels, according to the company.

Because Solyndra's tube panels are lighter and allow wind to pass through them easily, there is less construction needed in terms of rooftop anchoring or shoring up a roof for significant weight-bearing. Because of this, according to Solyndra, its system is significantly cheaper to install than flat-panel systems

While solar power may not be considered the complete solution to U.S. energy woes, many commercial, industrial, and public facilities are looking at using solar photovoltaic systems as a supplement to their facilities' energy diets. In April, for example, the landmark Staples Center in Los Angeles announced it will be covering its 24,196-foot roof with photovoltaic modules.

Thin-film solar cells, particularly CIGS panels, have been attracting a lot of attention and funding. SoloPower, NanoSolar, and Ava Solar are thin-film solar companies that have announced funding in the hundreds of millions over the last few months. Even IBM is getting into CIGS solar cells through a partnership with a Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Solyndra's funding comes from a mix of venture capital and private equity investments totaling $600 million to date. Solyndra investors include Virgin Green Fund, the Abu Dhabi-based Masdar, Rockport Capital Partners, and Argonaut Capital, according to a company spokeswoman.

The company has already been expanding its current plant, Venture Beat reported early Tuesday morning.

Solyndra counts Solar Power, the company contracted to do the Staples Center, and Phoenix Solar, a large solar power integration company in Europe, among its satisfied customers.

"By eliminating the need for roof-penetrating mounts and wind ballasts, PV arrays with Solyndra panels can be installed with one-third the labor, in one-third of the time, at one-half the cost. For commercial rooftops, PV module installation time can now be measured in days, not weeks. For flat commercial rooftops this is game-changing technology," Manfred Bachler, chief technical officer at Phoenix Solar, said in a statement.

The creaking electricity grid got a shot in the arm on Tuesday from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is leading a $75 million investment in smart-grid start-up Silver Spring Networks.

The money will fund the company's expansion globally, Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr said in a statement. He called implementation of the smart grid "one of the most important clean-technology initiatives of the coming decade."

It's one of the first investments doled out from KPCB's $500 million Green Growth fund, established earlier this year with money earmarked for the costly task of making energy-related technologies commercial.

The "smart grid" is a catchall term to describe a number of products for adding automation to the electricity distribution system. For consumers, it can mean in-home energy displays or appliances that communicate back to utilities to save energy during peak demand times.

Silver Spring makes equipment and software for utilities to upgrade their grid. Its devices on utility poles can broker information over the Internet between a home's smart meter and a utility, to warn of an outage or to send energy usage information.

Smart grids comprise one of the most promising approaches to making the power grid more efficient. By curtailing demand at certain times, utilities can avoid building new power plants to meet growing electricity usage.

Kleiner Perkins' big bet on green technologies was the subject of an extensive profile in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday.

The article said that the storied venture capital firm, which was an early backer of Internet icons Amazon.com, Google, and others, has invested in about 40 green-tech start-ups but is still awaiting a successful financial "exit" of an initial public offering or acquisition.

Existing investors Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, and Northgate Capital will also participate in the Silver Spring Networks funding.

In its third round of funding, Industrial Origami secured $17 million on Monday toward commercializing its fold-up sheet metal technologies for building cars and household appliances.

Wedges punched into the edges of sheet metal enable geometric forms to fit together, reducing the amount of welding and fasteners.

(Credit: Industrial Origami)

The company says its patented system can slash manufacturing costs by 70 percent. Touted environmental benefits include less scrap waste at a factory as well as more efficient industrial shipping and storage.

The London-based Environmental Technologies Fund led the round.

"Industrial Origami profoundly changes the way products are designed and manufactured," said Patrick Sheehan, a partner at the fund, said in a statement.

Washing-machine maker Whirlpool is producing goods using the technology, which is compatible with CAD design software.

Industrial Origami says its system would work with materials other than steel, including plastic and composites, and could be used in an array of additional industries including telecommunications and consumer electronics.