Investors loved the wind energy sector, and they showed it by blowing the most investment dollars that way in 2010. They also were most busy with energy efficiency deals, the number of which surpassed other cleantech categories last year, according to a U.S. market report by Peachtree Capital Advisors. Read more »
Will noise from ocean installations influence migratory marine animals? How should ocean power proposals be evaluated? A round of grants totaling over $4.2 million announced on Tuesday will support a crop of research projects seeking answers to these questions and more over the next three years. Read more »
Renewables rule the day when it comes to investments in the energy and utilities industry. A Dow Jones VentureSource report shows the renewable energy sector accounted for $221 million of the $359 million raised by the energy and utilities industry during the third quarter of 2010. Read more »
If the third quarter represented anything, it was that M&A is alive and well, particularly in the Big Data space. If a company can store or analyze large amounts of data with any degree of innovation, a larger vendor is likely eyeing them for an acquisition. Read more »
BrightSource Energy and French power giant Alstom have formed a partnership aimed at building solar-thermal power plants in a ring around the Mediterranean. In terms of geography, if not scale, the plan echoes the scheme of the Desertec Initiative, the mega-giant of solar-thermal projects. Read more »
The UK government unveiled major spending cuts today, taking bites out of welfare benefits and other public programs while pledging to provide £2.2 billion pounds (about $3.5 billion USD) for renewable energy and carbon capture projects and preserving a feed-in tariff for solar power. Read more »
Want Facetime-like video chat on your iPhone 3GS or Android phone, but you don’t have a front-facing camera? Then iSeeU could be the right solution for you: It’s a simple mirror that you mount to your phone to film yourself with your rear-facing camera. Neat. Read more »
Proferi Software, a company started by software industry veteran Christian Gheorghe, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is developing a cloud-based enterprise performance management system, and is keeping covers on its product plans. Read more »
Nielsen is adding its voice to the chorus of research firms confirming the ascension of Android. Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform with 32 percent of purchases, followed by the iPhone and RIM. Read more »
Regulated industries like health care and financial services deal with large quantities of sensitive data many deem unsuitable for cloud storage. But for those prepared to invest in understanding and meeting the requirements of such heavily regulated environments, there are many opportunities to offer premium services. Read more »
Amazon Web Services is launching Read Replicas, a new feature for its relational database service, RDS. The new feature would make it easy to scale MySQL deployments and would make it a breeze for customers to create one or more copies of a MySQL database instance. Read more »
With many companies — including those in the rich, technology-savvy financial sector — struggling to store and analyze their mountains of data, it pays to establish a foothold in the analytics market. For vendors utilizing the capabilities of Hadoop, such a promise might be even sweeter. Read more »
A tear-down of the new Apple TV reveals that the device loads a whopping 8 GB of Flash memory. Wait, didn’t Steve Jobs tell us that we won’t download any movies to the device? That’s because he wants to keep those 8 GB for apps. Read more »
Now that Netflix has an app on the iPad and the iPhone, it could make a push into the Android ecosystem based on job postings that have cropped up. An Android app could expand Netflix’s audience base even further, especially on new Android-based tablets. Read more »
Forget AngelGate and shift your attention to the big-money world of cloud computing and infrastructure startups. While the clashing egos clang in the Silicon Valley echo chamber, massive amounts of money have started to flow into the cloud companies, at nosebleed valuations. Read more »
Though few seem to notice, Amazon is not-so-quietly building out its Amazon Web Services (AWS) to take on traditional enterprise computing…and win. While today AWS mostly undermines only the software businesses of open-source vendors like Red Hat, tomorrow it will likely challenge the giants of enterprise applications. Read more »
Picking winners and losers is always a dicey exercise, but Lux Research took that plunge and issued a report this week, which points to likely revenue winners and IPO candidates over the coming year. The names that popped out include Amonix, Enphase Energy and Abound Solar. Read more »
Global Solar on Tuesday unveiled its new flexible solar panel that can be integrated into roofing membranes. The idea is that buildings and roofs can be built with the solar materials weaved right into them, lowering the cost and the time of the solar installation. Read more »
California state regulators have spent the last few years trying to revise a program that was meant to boost small-scale renewable energy generation but wasn’t popular because it wasn’t lucrative enough to attract many takers. Now, a new proposal has emerged. Read more »
Utilities know they have to figure out how to store energy produced intermittently, such as wind and solar, or store energy from fossil-fuel power plants to keep the grid loaded when wind turbines and solar energy equipment aren’t doing their best. Read more »
UPDATE: As it turns out, Juwi Solar really likes MiaSole. The German power project developer has inked a multiyear, 600-megawatt agreement that calls for MiaSole to ship 50 megawatts in 2011 and more in the following years. Read more »
Bloomberg is now reporting the next generation Apple TV, rumored to be renamed the iTV, will be unveiled at the annually anticipated Apple event next month. Apple is said to be in talks with networks to bring $0.99 rentals of television shows to the iTunes Store. Read more »
Americans overestimate the energy savings of those actions and underestimate the energy consumption of other behaviors, such as using central air conditioning, according to a survey published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more »
Facebook is expanding its video capabilities and creating a new live video channel to connect with its users. Beginning today, the social media startup plans to use Facebook Live to keep users informed about new product features, giving them a deeper look into the social network. Read more »
Greentech has become a big subject in corporate conference rooms over the past year. Large companies have been among the top investors so far this year, and the latest example came from Samsung Electronics. Read more »
Most collaboration tools focus on assigning tasks to the people on your team who will get them done. Teamly takes a different approach, encouraging your team to look for the priorities in your project and exercise a little autonomy. Read more »
A Kleiner Perkins-backed startup is supplying the gear for the largest solar farm in the world that will use concentrating photovoltaics — a hybrid tech that uses solar cells and solar thermal tech. Read more »
Schott Solar’s announcement that it plans to halve its factory capacity for solar thermal equipment and will lay off 30 workers is a sobering reminder of some of the hurdles ahead for this emerging industry (or re-emerging, depending on your perspective). Read more »
Sonic Solutions added a new feature to its RoxioNow digital video platform, allowing companies like Blockbuster and Best Buy to deliver videos to mobile devices. By teaming up with Widevine, RoxioNow will now be able to deliver videos to iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry devices. Read more »
How big will the solar market be next year? Big, but not growing as fast as the previous year, according to iSuppli. Read more »
Heat has long been the enemy of solar cells — high temperatures can cook a cell and most cells aren’t set up to take advantage of the heat beating down from the sun. But not to a group of Stanford researchers. Read more »
Panasonic Corp. plans to spend up to about $9.5 billion buying out two of its subsidiaries in an effort to go greener, faster. The company announced today that it aims to take total control of Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works. Read more »
The first wireless and web-connected gadget for Microsoft-Hohm is now available in the form of an electric meter sensor, a wireless LCD monitor and a Wi-Fi adapter. With this combo, I’m able to track my electric usage, determine my home’s carbon footprint and get green recommendations. Read more »
“Revolutionary.” That’s how the Department of Energy describes the methods for generating fuels directly from sunlight that the agency hopes will emerge from a new project in California. An energy research “hub” just been awarded $122 million to work on the tech. Read more »
Alta Devices, a secretive thin-film solar startup backed by venture firms including Kleiner Perkins, Technology Partners and Crosslink Capital, has begun to expand its staff and rack up a pile of patent applications. Read more »
Applied Materials is leaving the thin film solar equipment business and plans to focus more on crystalline silicon solar, LED lighting and other “advanced energy” technologies, the chip equipment giant announced on Wednesday. Read more »
Today on the Net: About 300 million Chinese residents tune into video on the web, Adap.tv added multiple new publishers as customers of its ad platform and cable profits could be boosted by higher affiliate fees due to TV Everywhere services. Read more »
