Even while some of the huge solar thermal plants being built in the deserts are hitting their milestones, others are facing hurdles due to transmission line delays and cost concerns. Meanwhile solar panel farms, particularly of utility scale, reached a record in 2012. Read more »
One of the most aggressive cleantech investors, VantagePoint Capital Partners, has stopped raising its more recent billion dollar cleantech fund. Why? Lack of interest from limited partners, the investors that put money into VC funds. And that’s been an ongoing trend. Read more »
The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
Despite a lot of hand wringing this year, various cleantech sectors are on the difficult path to market maturation, and not necessarily in a “crisis.” Read more »
In 2013 cleantech investing will move toward companies serving unsubsidized markets where software plays a role in reducing power consumption. In many ways this is a return to plays for energy efficiency, and there’s still money to be made from business models built around saving energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In a new filing SolarCity says it plans to sell 11.5 million shares at $8 per share, well below its previous range of $13 – $15 per share. However the IPO seems to be still moving, and only slipped past its original deadline to price Tuesday night. Read more »
Solar installer and financier SolarCity has set the terms for its planned IPO, and plans to sell 10.1 million shares at between $13 and $15 per share. At the midpoint the company would raise $141 million. Read more »
Solar thermal company BrightSource is actually looking to raise $130 million, which is another $50 million over the amount it announced last month. The company makes solar thermal power plants which use mirrors and a boiler to produce electricity. Read more »
California regulators approved some — but not all — of the power contracts that Southern California Edison wants to have with BrightSource Energy in a compromise that they say will provide the state’s residents with more affordable solar power in the run long. Read more »
The leading solar thermal developer BrightSource has raised a massive round of $80 million in private equity. It’s a rare move these days that a cleantech startup can raise that much money, but BrightSource has diligently been scaling up Ivanpah, its inaugural farm near Las Vegas. Read more »
SolarCity filed to go public in April, but we are only now getting a glimpse of its IPO plan. The company is proposing to raise roughly $201 million and join the NASDAQ family. Read more »
According to a new report out on Monday, traditionally Republican and Swing states are showing the most growth in green jobs. That’s pretty surprising if you’ve been listening to all the Solyndra and anti-green job rhetoric of the election cycles. Read more »
This is what it feels like inside Ivanpah, the world’s largest solar thermal farm under construction. We drive along the solar mirror fields, take an elevator to the top of one of the 450-foot towers, and peek inside the assembly building at. Read more »
From nine stories up the 450 foot tower at the Ivanpah solar thermal farm, the tens of thousands of mirrors look like metallic chiclets, and the workers like Doozers walking amongst them. The first of its kind solar site is in a full construction boom. Read more »
The federal government hopes to ease controversy with the development of a road map that identifies 285,000 acres of public land that will make the best locations for solar energy development in six western states. Read more »
Now that solar startup BrightSource Energy has ditched its IPO plans, some might think the company has dropped off the radar. But there’s actually some interesting things — some positive, some not so positive — going on with the company this week. Check out this latest news: Read more »
In Enphase Energy’s first earnings report as a public company, the solar micro inverter maker showed strong revenue growth, doubling its revenues between the first quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2011. Read more »
The story behind why solar thermal company BrightSource Energy pulled its IPO: basically because it could. Read more »
Despite the series of withdrawals of greentech IPOs this month, solar rooftop installer SolarCity announced on Monday that it is planning for an IPO. Will it fare better than the other greentech IPO hopefuls this month? Read more »
Greentech investor Nancy Pfund — who I once called the most successful and positive greentech investor you haven’t heard of — can’t always be positive. Her fund’s portfolio company BrightSource pulled its IPO plans in the same week that Dunkin’ Donuts raised a secondary offering. Read more »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Solar thermal company BrightSource has set the price range for its planned IPO at $21 to $23 per share for its 6.9 million shares. The company, which first filed for an IPO last April, could raise $182.51 million when it makes its market debut. Read more »
BrightSource Energy, which builds solar power plants and plans to do an IPO, has completed about a quarter, or 25 percent, of its first project, Ivanpah, which is on schedule to come online next year, the company said in a government filing on Friday. Read more »
Alan Salzman, co-founder of VantagePoint Capital Partners, has two words of advice for investors trying to make money on their cleantech investments in a difficult year: be patient and embrace the enemy. Read more »
Half of successful VC-backed cleantech start-ups stumble along the way. Entrepreneurs who raise big financing rounds at sky-high valuations can end up shooting themselves in the foot. Read more »
After a couple of years under development, Google has shut down its project to design its own solar mirrors for a centralized solar thermal farm. Now it’s the job of researchers and solar execs to see if there’s anything to use from Google’s solar research. Read more »
Google is officially shutting down its own in-house research initiative and equity investing focus on lowering the cost of clean power, called Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, or RE
Solar thermal startup BrightSource recently finished building a solar-to-steam farm for oil giant Chevron, which will enable Chevron to use steam from the solar farm for enhanced oil recovery. But according to a filing from BrightSource, that project ended up costing significantly more than BrightSource expected. Read more »
It’s been over a month since the Solyndra news came out, but it’s still dominating. Because it just won’t go away, here’s my top five list of projects that the DOE also backed with loan guarantees and that are showing some early signs of success. Read more »
Chevron officially started up its solar-powered oil recovery facility in Coalinga, California on Monday. Here’s a video and photos of the plant, which uses tech from BrightSource. Read more »
The Googlization of solar is here, and software, big data, wireless networks and IT will be a fundamental part of the future of modern energy infrastructure. Read more »
A first-of-its-kind, massive solar thermal farm that uses mirrors to tap into the sun’s heat, is under construction in the desert in California, a short drive from Las Vegas. In a rare opportunity I got a chance to take a tour. Here are my photos. Read more »
Curious about what a project that concentrates the sun’s rays and turns them into steam looks like? Here’s photos of Chevron’s solar to steam project, which uses tech from BrightSource, and with a plan to use the steam for enhanced oil recovery. Read more »
Yet another massive solar thermal farm in the California desert is ditching the thermal part and opting for solar panels. Solar Trust, which has been developing a 1 GW solar farm in California, announced it will use panels instead and give up $2.1B of federal help. Read more »
As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmentalists. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement with the environmental groups to add thousands of acres near their projects for wildlife protection. Read more »
And now for the clear dip that we’ve all been waiting for. According to a report out on Wednesday morning from Dow Jones VentureSource, with analysis by Ernst & Young, cleantech venture capital investing dropped 44 percent to $1.1 billion. Read more »
The second quarter brought a slew of greentech developments: We saw near-record investment in utility-scale clean energy projects but falling valuations for clean-energy stocks; big investments in solar thermal projects but struggling markets for solar photovoltaic systems; and rising private equity green investment while green VC took ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The common thread in greentech is: China. The country, which has been the world’s key growth engine for clean energy and green technology over the past few years, has begun to see some weakness, and that’s causing ripple effects through the global green economy. Read more »
While the greentech IPOs that have happened in the past year have fared decently, they’re no comparison to many of the public debuts in the works by social media companies. Zynga’s reported potential $2 billion raise could deliver five times Tesla’s combined IPO and follow-on offering. Read more »
The DOE has been getting the remainder of its loan guarantees out the door at record speed in time to beat the program’s sunset on Sept. 30 of this year. On Tuesday the DOE announced almost $2 billion in loan guarantees for two solar thermal projects. Read more »
