Soladigm’s $30 million round was led by DBL Investors and Nano Dimension and included existing investors Khosla Ventures and Sigma Partners. It also included a small, undisclosed investment from GE, which named Soladigm as one of 12 winners of GE’s first round of ecomagination investments last month.

Soladigm previously raised about $30 million, as well as a $3.5 million stimulus grant from the Department of Energy. The Silicon Valley company, with technology licensed from  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has also landed $44 million in Mississippi state loans and incentives to build its factory, which is expected to cost $130 million.

While Soladigm expects to produce its electrochromic glass from pilot lines in 2011, full-scale commercial production from the Mississippi factory is expected in 2012, CEO Rao Mulpuri said in an interview on Friday. Soladigm is also working on financial arrangements to fund the remainder of the factory construction cost, Mulpuri said, but wouldn’t go into more detail.

“All of that money is really being used to launch the commercial high-volume operation, as well as drive the sales and marketing channels to drive this into the market,” Mulpuri said. Soladigm is working with window manufacturing and installation and sales channel partners, he said, though he wouldn’t disclose which companies were involved.

Soladigm will have to line up some heavyweight partners to compete with rival Sage Electrochromics. The Faribault, Minn.-based company was awarded a $72 million DOE loan guarantee, and recently landed an $80 million strategic investment from French glass and construction giant Saint-Gobain to help build a $135 million factory in Minnesota. That gives it both financial backing and a clear path to market, as well as a potential buyer for the company’s technology in the future.

Mulpuri wouldn’t discuss technical details of Soladigm’s electrochromic glass, which can lighten or darken to block light and heat to keep buildings cooler during sunny, hot days and cut up to 20 percent from a typical building’s HVAC energy use.

But according to experts familiar with Soladigm’s technology, the company is working on two lines of self-tinting glass. For its upcoming commercial products, Soladigm is using tungsten oxide, a well-known material for smart windows that darkens when a voltage is applied to absorb more light, Delia Milliron, a nanoscience researcher at Berkeley Lab, said in an August lecture.

Soladigm is also working on a Berkeley Labs technology using magnesium as an electrochromic layer, Milliron said in August. That reacts with hydrogen gas to become magnesium hydride, which reflects light rather than absorbing it — a difference that could make the windows even more efficient at keeping buildings cool, since it would avoid having the glass itself heat up.

For more research on cleantech financing check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Cleantech Financing Trends 2010 & Beyond
• An Assessment of the Lighting Controls Market
• Report: Cleantech’s Third Quarter Growing Pains

Image courtesy of Soladigm.

Sage made headlines earlier this year when the Department of Energy granted it a $72 million loan guarantee, making it one of only a dozen or so companies to receive one of the coveted federal loan guarantees (President Obama is now streamlining this program). The company received the loan guarantee to build a 250,000 square foot factory in Faribault, Minnesota, and Sage says it will use the new funding from Saint-Gobain to continue to build out the factory, which will cost a total of $135 million to construct. When built, Sage says the plant will be “the world’s largest and most advanced electrochromic glass manufacturing facility.”

That’s where the economies of scale and the crucial Saint-Gobain investment comes in. The factory will be able to produce large sheets of glass — larger than previously available — opening up the bulk of the building market to the company. The glass will also be able to be produced at a lower cost than it is currently being produced at, according to the companies. Sage will produce the glass for both its own and Saint Gobain’s product lines at the factory, and the companies’ research and development and intellectual property will be merged.

While Sage will remain an independent company, in the world of acquisitions, clearly the companies are dating, if not engaged. Saint-Gobain will sell the Sage glass product in Europe under its Quantum Glass brand, while Sage will sell its glass in the U.S. market. Sage has also raised money from a list of well-known private investors including Good Energies, Applied Ventures (the VC arm of Applied Materials) and Bekaert.

Sage’s windows are made using an all-ceramic stack of thin-film coatings over a glass substrate. A low voltage of DC power can switch the windows from letting in more than 60 percent of visible light, down to less than 5 percent. The DOE has noted that electrochromic windows can cut air conditioning costs by up to 20 percent per year in commercial buildings.

An up and coming competitor to Sage is 3-year-old Soladigm, which also makes electrochromic windows and is building its first commercial factory plant in Mississippi. Soladigm has a licensing agreement with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for a set of processes for modulating light, and is working on materials that could absorb or reflect light. Soladigm has raised about $30 million in equity and debt and received a $3.5 million grant from the DOE.

For more research on cleantech financing check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Cleantech Financing Trends 2010 & Beyond
• An Assessment of the Lighting Controls Market
• Report: Cleantech’s Third Quarter Growing Pains

Serious Materials CEO Kevin Surace told me in an interview last week that the advantages of the company’s software, dubbed Serious Energy Manager and Serious Insight, are that it can plug into a variety of building automation and energy management systems already in use, including Cisco’s building automation system. That means it’s not necessarily competing head to head with the building automation and control players like Honeywell, or Echelon. In that respect I can also imagine that it’s a bit similar to BuildingIQ’s energy software, but with less of a focus on control.

Surace says that the software product, which can monitor many of the building’s energy draws, like lighting and heating and cooling, is a lot lower cost than competitors on the market. One of the reasons for that is because it’s a software as a service product that’s hosted on the web. Another, I would speculate, is because as a new player in the space, and with two other product lines to bring in revenue, Serious is probably pricing its software to undercut the competition.

Serious Materials already has dozens of customers using the software tool, which can also be sold with sensors, says Surace. Some of the customers that it’s sold its building materials to, have opted for the software. “You can imagine the synergy across the products,” says Surace. At the end of the day building energy management software is a sizable market opportunity for Serious Materials, but an increasingly crowded space.

Image courtesy of cdsessums.

For more research on smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry
• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Walmart is hiring SolarCity to install up to 15 megawatts of solar panels at 20-30 locations in California and Arizona. In its press release, Walmart highlighted its cash-rich ability to help lower the costs of the newer of the two technologies: solar panels from MiaSole that use layers of copper, indium, gallium and selenium to convert sunlight into electricity. First Solar, the publicly-traded leader in the thin film solar space, uses cadmium telluride as its semiconductor material.

MiaSole, a Silicon Valley startup that emerged in recent months after a few years of re-engineering its CIGS technology, began commercial shipments in small quantities only late last year. The company, backed by investors including Kleiner Perkins, recently signed a 600-megawatt supply deal with German project developer Juwi Solar.

MiaSole is one of a club of American companies that aim to popularize the use of CIGS thin films. Other members include Stion, SoloPower, Global Solar Energy, Nanosolar, Solyndra and Ascent Solar Technologies.

CIGS solar panels are thinner than conventional, crystalline silicon solar panels. They can forgo the use of glass as a protective layer, making them good candidates for projects that require light-weight equipment. SoloPower, Global Solar and Ascent all recently launched flexible thin films for paving over flat roofs or even integrating into roofing materials.

How much of the 15-megawtt project will use CIGS thin film solar remains to be determined, SolarCity said. Installations at Walmart stores in Mountain View and Stockton already have been completed. The rest of the project is set for completion by the end of 2011. Each installation will provide 20-30 percent of a store’s energy needs, Walmart said. The retailer already had added solar to 31 other sites in California and Hawaii before signing up SolarCity.

SolarCity, based in Foster City, Calif., will own and maintain the systems and sell the solar electricity to Walmart. Both companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal. First Solar has been a supplier to Walmart for some time, and the solar maker announced a $25 million investment in SolarCity in October 2008.

SolarCity has managed to attract a lot of investments to grow its business, including $90 million from U.S. Bancorp and $60 million from Pacific Venture Capital (part of PG&E Corp.) to finance residential and commercial installations.  Back in May, it announced it had bought the assets of Building Solutions, an energy efficiency equipment and service provider, in order to beef up its offerings beyond solar electric systems. At the time, SolarCity said the acquisition will allow it to sell products in lighting, cooling, water heating, among others, that help to a home and business use electricity more efficiently and save money in the process.

For more research on cleantech financing check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Cleantech Financing  Trends 2010 & Beyond

Image courtesy of Miasole.

The latest investments go to Adaptive Computing, Ciranova, Joyent and Nexant. Nexant, in particular, develops a host of software for the energy industry and other corporate users, including grid operators, utilities and financial institutions. The software enables the companies to manage customer billing and incentive programs, wholesale market pricing and other enterprise infrastructure.

San Francisco-based Nexant, founded in 2000, also works with its customers to buy and sell energy certificates and credits and lists Nth Power, IBM, Morgan Stanley Global Energy Group and Energy Software and Consulting among its other investors.

Intel Capital announced the $200 million Invest in America Fund in February this year, as well as an initiative it spearheaded to bring together 24 VC firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, to invest a total of $3.5 billion into startups over the next two years. Back in July, Intel Capital announced five investments into cleantech startups in energy monitoring, smart grid and other areas.

Here is a rundown of the three other Intel investments:

Adaptive Computing: Based in Provo, Utah, and founded in 2001, Adaptive Computing develops automation software to manage supercomputers and data centers, and counts Yahoo, IBM, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Boeing, ExxonMobil and Merck as customers. Intel Capital led the $14 million Series A round, with participation by Tudor Ventures and EPIC Ventures. Adaptive Computing plans to use funding from Intel to boost its cloud computing offerings.

Ciranova: Intel returns to its semiconductor roots by picking Ciranova, which develops software to enable engineers to design communication capabilities — such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — into chips for a variety of consumer electronics and communication equipment. Designing analog and mixed signals onto a chip is a tricky task, especially given the increasingly sophisticated consumer devices that can hop on several types of communication networks. Ciranova, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has worked closely with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Joyent: Intel is bullish enough about Joyent to invest in it a second time. Joyent runs cloud computing services, an increasing popular approach that offers distributed computing on demand. The San Francisco-based company’s customers include LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe (online purveyor of luxury goods), Kabam! (social game developer) and Context Optional (marketing software). Joyent said Tuesday that Intel’s funding is part of a $15 million Series C round, which also includes money from Greycroft Partners and Liberty Global. Joyent runs data centers in California, Texas, Massachusetts and China.

Image courtesy of stephen.moore.

Daintree CEO Danny Yu thinks there’s a good chance. Only about 7 percent of buildings in the U.S. have lighting controls, meaning that incumbents are likely to be competing across each other’s customer bases to deliver interoperable lighting control products. The market wants “a wide availability of solutions that are easy to use and easy to integrate, regardless of vendor,” as Yu sees it,and that means systems built on standards of some kind, rather than proprietary technologies.

That’s where ZigBee comes in. Since 2003, Mountain View, Calif.-based Daintree has made ZigBee testing and certification gear, giving it a pedigree in the low-power wireless standard now underlying many of the smart meter-home energy management projects underway at utilities across the country. That could give ZigBee a leg up in the commercial and industrial lighting retrofit market as well, where wireless solutions could be cheaper than those that require rewiring buildings.

Several other lighting control startups, such as Adura Technologies and Echoflex Solutions, are also going the wireless route, but Yu says that Daintree’s plan to partner with OEMs should give it lower capital costs than competitors that are building their own equipment. Beyond building control giants, other potential partners could be demand response providers such as EnerNoc and Comverge, he said.

Daintree hasn’t announced any partnerships yet, but Yu said the company expects to make a big announcement in the next month or so. As noted in our new report on GigaOM Pro (subscription required), building owners list a “one-stop integrated solution” and having a “plug-and-play concept” as top priorities when it comes to new lighting control technologies. Since the incumbents in the field have yet to make a big public push into lighting controls themselves, it’s likely that startups will be setting the pace — and if Daintree’s platform works as well as advertised, it seems to have a pretty good shot.

For more, see GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Report: An Assessment of the Lighting Control Market Segment

RoxioNow powers the digital storefront for a number of retailers, including Best Buy, Blockbuster and Sears. The addition of mobile devices will give those companies even more outlets through which to sell and rent digital videos. RoxioNow is already available through a number of consumer electronics (CE) devices, including LG Blu-ray players and TiVo DVRs, and will soon have its technology embedded on TVs and Blu-ray players from Best Buy’s Insignia brand, as well as Boxee’s upcoming broadband set-top box.

The ability to stream to multiple mobile platforms also pushes forward Sonic’s plans to enable “buy once, watch anywhere” capabilities for videos that are served through its RoxioNow platform. Giving consumers the chance to pay for a piece of content on one platform and watch it on any number of devices is seen as something of a holy grail for digital video.

Sonic and Widevine have been working to enable the option as part of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), which recently unveiled its Ultraviolet DRM framework and its plan to create a digital storage locker that would keep track of a user’s digital content and the device upon which he’d be able to watch it.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: The Return of DRM (subscription required)

Electrochromic windows can darken or lighten the windows to control the amount of light that enters a room, and one of the goals is to make sure the windows remain transparent so as not to block any view. Soladigm doesn’t say much about its technology and puts nothing on that subject on its website. But we do know that Soladigm did sign a licensing agreement with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2008 for a set of processes for modulating light. According to researchers there, Soladigm is working on materials that could absorb or reflect light.

What’s intriguing about the Berkeley Lab’s technology is the use of a novel material for the electrochromic layer. Instead of absorbing the light, a more common smart window technology, the material reflects it, says Delia Milliron, a nanoscience researcher at Berkeley Lab, during a lecture on smart windows on Monday. The reflective film is based on magnesium, and when it reacts with hydrogen gas to become magnesium hydride, its reflective property changes to become transparent and allow the light in, Milliron said.

Tom Richardson, a Berkeley Lab researcher, is an inventor of this material. Here is a YouTube video explaining his research.

The magnesium hydride material isn’t what Soladigm plans to use to make its first commercial products, however, Milliron said. Instead, the company plans to use Tungsten oxide as the electrochromic layer for absorbing light. Tungsten oxide is a well-known material for smart windows. The film makes up one of several layers of materials, such as transparent conductive oxide and lithium ions, that are sandwiched between glass.

The tungsten oxide does its magic of blocking the light when it’s flooded with ions that are activated by applying a voltage to the transparent conductive oxide. So, to darken a window, a voltage sends the ions to the electrochromic layer. To lighten it, the process is reversed to drive ions out of it.

The use of Tungsten oxide creates two key technical hurdles. The material does “a decent good job” of dealing with visible light, but not so much when it comes to near infrared light (which radiates heat), Milliron said. And, because it absorbs light, the material actually heats up the window itself.

“It’s like wearing black and going out on a sunny day. You are trying to prevent heating, but your window gets very hot. They have a secondary haeting problem where they need to find a way to reject that heat,” she said. The use of the magnesium hydride helps to solve those technical challenges.

Soladigm also has gotten patents for its own work. The U.S. Patent Office and Trademark Office granted a patent in March this year that outlines the use of tantalum-nitride as an ion-blocking layer between a transparent conductive oxide and the electrochromic layer. Another patent, granted in January this year, looks at the use of antimony alloy as the electrochromic layer (this nanotech patent blog offers more details).

Soladigm has a lot to prove. Research into electrochromic glass has been around for several decades, but it remains expensive to make. The technology has gradually showed up in windows in recent years, but at $50-$100 per square foot, it’s too expensive for consumers or building managers, said Berkeley Lab researcher Steve Selkowitz, during the lecture. The goal is to get the price down to less than $20 per square foot.

The startup has attracted a fair amount of funding to take its know-how out of the lab and into the market. The company has raised about $30 million in equity and debt and $3.5 million grant from the Department of Energy. For the proposed $130 million factory in Mississippi, Soladigm is getting a $40 million loan from the state and $4 million more in other state incentives. It still needs to raise more money to complete it, however.

Given the government’s focus on technologies to create energy-efficient buildings, many other companies are eying opportunities in the window business. Sage Electrochromics in Minnesota has commercial products, and it recently won a $1.6 million DOE grant. Applied Materials has gotten nearly $2 million from the same DOE grant program to figure out ways to quickly and cheaply coat the glass with various layers of materials. EControl-Glas in Germany also is selling electrochromic glass.

For more research on cleantech financing check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Cleantech Financing Trends 2010 & Beyond

That’s the subject of a big report just published today: Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010 – 2015 (sub req’d) that takes a comprehensive look at video chatting in general (mobile included). This excellent article points out the major players in this area, and details the potential issues such as network congestion such video chatting will bring.

1). People Power: Wireless energy management startup People Power just released its software developer’s kit called SuRF (Sensor Ultra Radio Frequency) which is based on the open source platform OSHAN (Open Source Home Area Network). When open source meets home energy management, the potential is massive. The company plans to reveal new details about its strategy, plans and products.

2). Vecarius: Vecarius is using power electronics, energy harvesting, energy storage and advanced materials to increase the energy efficiency of vehicles. As co-founder William Sanchez explained to us recently, at the end of the day vehicle energy efficiency can be boosted through chips, software and computing. Vecarius says its patent-pending technology can “recapture a large portion of the 75 percent of energy lost in internal combustion engine and hybrid vehicles.”

3). ecoATM: Cash for high-tech trash. That’s the basic concept for the recycling kiosk — or “Automated eCycling Stations” from startup ecoATM. You drop off old electronics at one of these machines, it calculates their value, then pays you on the spot, in cash or coupons.

4). Building Solutions: Building Solutions has developed software called “Home Performance Pro,” which is an easy-to-use, detailed and accurate home testing software, “built by energy auditors for energy auditors.” The stimulus package has allocated billions of dollars for “weatherization,” which is basically making buildings more energy efficient through things like upgrading insulation, heating and cooling systems, air filters and windows. The first step to knowing if a home needs these things is an audit.

5). GE: O.K. so conglomerate General Electric isn’t exactly a startup, but the company plans to announce an innovative new product for energy efficient backup power. We’ll hold the details for the launchpad event.

6). energics: If you thought the Smart Grid just arrived, get ready for Smart Grid 3.0 says the team at energics. The company has developed software that can develop patterns to dynamically drive process models, build context and relevance, and progressively “learn” and automate smart grid systems. If there’s something the smart grid sorely needs it’s automation deep within the network of the grid (see New Opportunities in the Smart Grid, on GigaOM Pro, subscription required).

7). ecoVouch: ecoVouch is a free web-based application for the iPhone that helps users find eco-friendly products and services close by. The folks behind ecoVouch plan to launch their platform that enables sustainable businesses to communicate effectively to participants through display ads, vouchers or a loyalty program, in a new and social way.

8). Soneter: “Know your flow.” That’s the motto behind Soneter’s meter technology that modifies water consumption behavior in the multifamily housing sector. The company’s product, which doesn’t require a retrofit or pipe cutting, tracks individual unit water use in real time and automatically bills them based on consumption.

9). Carbon Voyage: Carbon Voyage’s web site enables users to compare travel options based on both cost and environmental impact. The service will find opportunities to fill empty journeys (taxis), share trips and help customers move onto low carbon transport alternatives. Right now the London-based team is focused on the U.K., but has plans to expand into other markets.

10). ecoDomus: ecoDomus’ software and services provide intelligent analysis of a building’s performance, including helping with LEED compliance, and leading to better maintenance practices that result in significant energy savings. ecoDomus’ product integrates a Building Information Model, a 3D representation of a facility, and real-time facility operations data acquired via sensors.