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SunRun Adds $90M From US Bancorp, Hopes for 2010 Solar Boom

Investors may not be so keen to put money into solar manufacturing these days, but they are pumping quite a bit of money into the solar retail sector. Sunrun is benefitting from this investor sentiment and announced Wednesday that it’s raised a $60 million in equity. Read more »

AquionEnergynightsigncrop

Aquion Energy, which is developing a low-cost battery for the power grid made from sodium and water, has closed $20 million of a planned $30 million round and has brought on investor Foundation Capital in addition to existing investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Read more »

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Power conversion startup Transphorm has added yet another high-profile investor to its list of backers: George Soros’ investment fund Quantum Strategic Partners. On Thursday Transphorm announced that it has raised another $25 million from Quantum Strategic Partners, as well as existing investors. Read more »

Investing Panel: Paul Kedrosky and Nat Goldhaber, Claremont Creek Ventures, Kevin Skillern, GE Energy Financial Services, and Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital, at Green:Net 2011

When it comes to clean-energy investing 2.0, venture capitalists are beyond looking for the silver bullet — or the magic battery –- they spent the last decade hunting and hoping for. Today, VCs are more likely to invest their dollars in slightly less ambitious energy-efficiency projects. Read more »

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It’s been a long year and a half since Cleantech Blog published its last Cleantech Blog Power 5 highlighting the top investors in cleantech. . . And the bottom five wild cards. Time for round two. Read more »

Last month, General Electric announced that it would be taking submissions from inventors and entrepreneurs seeking a piece of a $200 million smart grid investment fund. Now GE says it has received 950 submissions from around the world. Read more »

GE announces a $200 million fund for smart grid innovation along with an electric vehicle charger called the Watt Station and a home energy device called the Nucleus. Read more »

SunRun, after announcing a $100 million solar fund with utility PG&E last week, has closed a $55 million Series C round led by VC heavyweights Sequoia Capital. The solar financier plans to use the funds to ramp up sales and expand its U.S. operations. Read more »

Back in 2004 startup Purfresh — then called Novazone — underwent a complete overhaul and began to refocus its efforts on selling its purification and preservation technology to the food and water industries. While the legacy that then-CEO David White (who was eventually replaced by David […] Read more »

Here’s more feedback that the Department of Energy’s first entrepreneur-in-residence program, which paired entrepreneurs from three well-known venture capital firms (Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and ARCH Venture Partners) with national labs, just didn’t deliver: Foundation Capital’s DOE EIR participant Michael Bauer is back working as an […] Read more »

Sure, your company’s smart grid tech might be the slickest on the market, but don’t expect that to guarantee success in the industry. According to a report out this morning from Lux Research, which predicts the smart grid market will be a $16 billion opportunity by […] Read more »

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A lot of the interest in the smart grid industry tends to swirl around consumers and home energy management. It can be fun to picture consumers one day buying gadgets at big box retailers that will let them micromanage their home heating, cooling and lighting, and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »

What will be the killer applications of the smart grid? Wouldn’t we all like to know, but we’re offering Earth2Tech readers a chance to peer into the closest thing we’ve got to a crystal ball. On Thursday morning (starting at 9:30AM PST) we’ll be featuring a […] Read more »

On the morning of January 28, we’re holding an exclusive event at our office in San Francisco that will take a close look at the next generation of smart grid applications. Here’s the idea: Now that smart grid infrastructure is being built out, what new applications […] Read more »

Highlighting the increased interest in green construction this year, green-building materials company Serious Materials announced on Tuesday that it has raised $60 million in its third round of funding. The round represents one of the largest U.S. venture-capital deals –- and the largest energy-efficiency deal –- […] Read more »

The idea behind vertically integrated companies is that each of its subsidiaries produces a part of the value-chain that, when connected together, delivers a stronger force. Think of steel barons owning mines, mills and railways, or American Apparel controlling production, distribution and marketing. For the smart […] Read more »

By some accounts, the build-out of the smart grid could be the biggest driver of wealth within the decade and create an even larger market than the emergence of the Internet. And now, in the early rollout phase, thousands of startups and large tech vendors are […] Read more »

I have been following the digital textbook world for some time. As an avid e-book fan, I can see the tremendous benefits that digital versions of textbooks can provide students. These benefits include ease-of-use, advanced capabilities like search, and possibly financial benefits, too. The word this […] Read more »

Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that helped launch the likes of Cisco, Apple and Google, has taken a cautious approach to investing in cleantech — a year and a half ago it had only announced four energy-related investments, and most of those were older, established firms. […] Read more »

Silver Spring Networks is one company that doesn’t have to rebrand itself as a smart grid maker to benefit from the billions of dollars in stimulus funds likely to usher in a smart grid boom. Investors are still handing out funds to the so-called “Cisco of […] Read more »

Foundation Capital will open the doors to its new green offices, decked out with technology from its cleantech portfolio companies, next Monday. The firm is pursuing LEED certification. Read more »

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s green energy platform has gained him fans among that industry’s most powerful players — its investors (see chart below). According to the presidential campaign donation database of the Center for Responsive Politics, the investors backing cleantech companies are backing Obama as well, […] Read more »

If you’re sick of staring at error messages when checking out a MySpace video slide show via a mobile, then Moblyng may be for you. The company translates Flash content into stills and video that can be viewed on a mobile phone. Right now it’s focused […] Read more »

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has recruited a new entrepreneur-in-residence to work in its Department of Energy program, which aims to commercialize clean energy technologies coming out of national labs. Kleiner’s representative for the program will be Joel Serface, the current director of the Austin Clean […] Read more »

Glance, a screen sharing/web conferencing service that we’ve covered before, would like to offer relief for potential customers who have experienced trouble trying to fly recently. With recent flight cancellations, airlines in bankruptcy and other issues, Glance is offering a free month’s subscription for those affected.  […] Read more »

Glitchy software isn’t just annoying, as more and more objects get electronic brains in the form of chips, it can be deadly. Automatic drug injection patches to the steering systems on advanced cars are powered by semiconductors that rely on software to tell them what to […] Read more »

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