Each Street Charge terminal comes equipped with three 15 watt solar panels mounted on overhead flanges, and a big 168 watt-hour lithium ion battery pack, capable of charging six devices simultaneously and maintaining a reserve power reservoir during the night. iPhone owners will have access to Lightning and 30-pin connectors, while there is a micro-USB plug for other phones. Each station also comes with three female USB ports for people who carry around their own cables.

Pensa created first created a prototype of Street Charge last year and installed it in a reclaimed public area in Brooklyn’s trendy Dumbo neighborhood. Pensa then teamed up with Goal Zero to build the kiosks using its solar power technology and with AT&T to deploy them. The first of the newly designed stations went up in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Governor’s Island, Union Square and Riverside Park. but AT&T plans to install more this summer in other high-traffic pedestrian areas, including Coney Island, Riverside Park, Rockaways, Summerstage in Central Park, Randall’s Island, and Hudson River Park.

With stark memories of Hurricane Sandy still vivid in many minds, New Yorkers don’t need to be reminded of the importance of an off-grid power source. After the storm, a city-wide power outage saw New Yorkers sharing generator power to charge phones and laptops. A handful of solar-powered kiosks isn’t going charge the entire city’s cellphones if there is another natural disaster, but they’re definitely a step toward creating a sustainable alternate power supply.

The charging service is free to use, but there looks to be plenty of monetization opportunities for the kiosks. The stations include panels for display advertising, and a Wi-Fi hotspot could easily be incorporated into its design. The kiosk could also be used as an information kiosk, incorporating digital maps with points of interest, or even as means of providing solar-powered lighting at night.

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Sol Voltaics, which is discussing its product and funding for the first time this week, said it has developed a low cost way to make tiny nanowires out of the semiconductor gallium arsenide. The company turns these nanowires into an ink, which can be layered onto basic solar panels and boost the efficiency of a standard panel by 25 percent.

The idea is that solar panel makers would want to buy this technology because they can sell the more efficient panels at a higher price, and raise their margins. In addition, the overall installed cost of the more efficient solar panels (they produce more power) could be lower by 15 percent to 20 percent.

Swedish solar innovation

Founded in 2008, Sol Voltaics won’t be producing its nanowire ink — called SolInk — at pilot scale until 2015, and commercial scale in 2016. But it’s already started to prove that its technology works, and has had its nanowire cells certified by research firm Fraunhofer for an efficiency of 13.8 percent. This year the company is focused on demoing how its ink boosts efficiency on a larger scale, and in 2014 they’ll work on perfecting the equipment that its customers will use to cover panels with the ink.

With just 20 employees, Sol Voltaics has been operating in a relatively lean mode for a solar manufacturing company. To date the startup has raised just $11 million in funding from private and public funders and family offices, including Industrifonden, Foundation Asset Management, Scatec, Nano Future Invest AS, Nordic Innovation and Vinnova. The company hopes to raise another $10 million to $20 million this year, and plans to cap all of its funding at $50 million by 2016.

Sol Voltaics has some well-known names in the solar and venture capital sectors. The company was founded by Lund University Professor Lars Samuelson, who is an expert on the type of semiconductor that Sol Voltaics uses to make its nanowires. The company is led by Dave Epstein, who is a serial entrepreneur and former partner with Crosslink Capital, and Magnus Ryde, who was the former CEO of TSMC America, is Sol Voltaics Chairman.

How does it work?

Sol Voltaic’s innovation is that it’s figured out how to make tiny wires using the normally expensive but highly efficient semiconductor gallium arsenide. Solar scientists have spent years using gallium arsenide in various ways to make ultra-efficient solar cells, but the only way the material can be cheap enough to actually be used on a commercial scale is if it’s used in very small amounts — hence the nanotech wire part. But, again, in previous years the production of nanowires has also been relatively expensive.

The breakthrough came when Samuelson figured out a way to make the gallium arsenide nanowires in a gas phase instead of in a solid phase. Sol Voltaics calls this their aerotaxy process. Under the right conditions, in an air reactor, the company can grow these nanowires in seconds and store them in a liquid, producing a sort of ink.

Sol Voltaics wants to take this ink and sell it to solar panel makers, alongside production equipment that they can use to layer the ink — inkjet style — onto their own solar panels. The nanowires in the ink act as guides for the light and concentrate it. The company says the capital expensive of the ink and machines add 1 to 2 cents per Watt for the panels.

Sol Voltaics is targeting Chinese and other global silicon solar makers that are struggling and producing many of their panels at a loss right now. Proving that the technology can help them out — and is worth the investment — will take quite a few key partners and demonstrations. The good thing, though, is that if one customer starts using it as a competitive advantage and it works, others will want to use it to keep up.

Some of these huge solar maker players will have to survive, and could adopt and invest in new technologies to do that. The ones that do survive, will see the continued solar panel market explode over the coming years. There was a record-breaking 3.3 gigawatts worth of solar panels — or 16 million individual solar panels — installed in the U.S. in 2012, making solar power the fastest-growing energy source domestically.

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Launched in 2011 and based in San Diego, Calif., OneRoof Energy — one of our 13 solar startups to watch in 2013 — teams up with roofers and electricians to sell rooftop solar systems and financing products (like leases). The company says it has $100 million worth of solar agreements, projected sales of solar financing deals of $300 million, and it says within 2013 it will have helped develop solar rooftop systems for 10,000 homes.

While solar startups that are making next-generation solar panels struggled in 2012 — and will continue to in 2013 — solar startups that are selling services are on the up and up. Solar nerds call those the “downstream” solar companies.

Those companies are doing well because solar cells and panels are at one of their cheapest points in history, and in the U.S. and China solar panels are being installed on rooftops at a rapid rate. The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that there were 3.2 GW worth of solar panel capacity installed in 2012 in the U.S., up from the 1.89 GW installed in the U.S. in 2011.

The boom in the U.S. is also because of the emergence of solar financing options like the one that OneRoof Energy provides. Customers pay little or no upfront cost for the systems, and then pay off the solar system over time, anywhere between a decade to two decades. Many customers can even find agreements where they pay less on their monthly energy bill with solar. But to provide financing agreements like that OneRoof Energy needs to raise project financing from investors like banks to cover the upfront cost of the system.

Korean conglomerate Hanwha already invested in OneRoof Energy back in 2011, and has funded other solar startups like solar panel tech maker TenKsolar, silicon wafer maker 1366 Technologies and Crystal Solar in Silicon Valley. Hanwha also spent $370 million for a nearly 50 percent stake in China-based silicon solar cell and panel maker Solarfun Power in 2010 (which has since been renamed Hanwha SolarOne). Hanwha has its own solar business is called Hanwha Solar, which set up an office in the U.S. in 2011 and inaugurated a $14 million research and development center in Silicon Valley.

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My wife and I both work from home, so even though we can rack up miles on our vehicles, most travel is short-range. But we didn’t want to go completely electric for our next car because we occasionally like to take trips to New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; all of which are 100 or more miles away.

How much was our Chevy Volt

I shared the details and costs of our solar panel project, so it makes sense to cover the Volt financials as well. The car still qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit, which can help offset some of the next cost. And that’s good because the base 2013 Volt starts at $39,145. Our particular vehicle has a few options — alloy wheels, a rear camera, sensors for front parking assistance and a forward collision alert camera — bringing the MSRP to $41,935 with destination charge included.

We actually opted to lease the vehicle for a few reasons, so we’re not get the direct tax credit benefit. Instead, the dealer gets the credit and can apply some of it to reduce the leasing costs. Since the Volt doesn’t have a long history of proven technology, we opted to work with the dealer on the lease and after applying some equity on our trade-in, our total payment including tax is $301 a month for 36 months. We also got a 4000W gas generator from the dealer, which was a Thanksgiving weekend perk, so now we’re really ready for the next big storm!

Ultimately, we paid nothing out of pocket, as a result of our trade-in and various incentives that GM and Ally Bank are currently offering. We also opted for 15,000 miles per year — which raises the monthly cost — because the Volt will be our primary vehicle. Another $6 of the monthly payment extends the 36,000 mile warranty to our potential 45,000 miles. Bear in mind that any particular deal you work out on a Volt will likely vary from ours; I’m simply trying to provide an idea of what it might cost.

Is it efficient?

Obviously, it’s too soon to say how efficient the car will be but so far I’m impressed. Here’s a screen shot of the first 73.2 miles we drove, which used 0.4 gallons of gas after the battery was depleted. Note that this data is for two days and the battery was recharged once; GM says you should expect about 38 miles of driving on the battery before the gas generator kicks in.

The Volt uses premium gas, which is currently near $4.00 a gallon nearby, so the 0.4 gallons used essentially cost $1.60. Of course, there are electricity costs involved as well when you consider the need to recharge the Volt, even though we over-produce energy with our solar panels. We currently pay just under $0.09 per kWh — not including any distribution costs, taxes or other fees — and we get paid at that same rate for excess energy.

So the 20.1 kWh used for our 73.2 mile drive would cost $1.81 on our electric bill. That works out to $3.41 for this driving session. Our old vehicle averaged 20 mpg and also used premium fuel, so the same 73.2 miles we covered would have cost $14.64 in gasoline. Note that there are many costs and benefits to look at, both short-term and long-term. The above exercise is just one example to view the cost to travel.

Better bring your smartphone!

Although we got a Volt to pair with our solar panels, I’m impressed with the MyLink system in the car, which is also available in other Chevy vehicles. MyLink is used on the 7-inch touchscreen — the same one that monitors energy usage above — through voice commands and GM’s OnStar service.

My wife and I both paired our smartphones with the MyLink system over Bluetooth, which lets us stream audio through the Pandora and Stitcher apps on our handsets. Both iOS and Android are supported and there’s even a MyLink application for both platforms. With it we can remotely monitor, stop or start the battery charging process, check our fuel level, start the car and much more.

MyLink will also play music from a USB-connected iOS device or from a USB stick. The system integrates Gracenote’s music database for audio file information such as title or artist and can display cover art as well. All of this music can also be controlled through voice. Say “Play artist” and the system will ask for an artist name. Speak it and the appropriate artist tunes start playing over Bluetooth audio or USB.

I like the idea that the car uses a smartphone for connectivity, mainly because I don’t want my connected car to have an embedded connection of its own. That’s just another potential data plan to pay for and there’s no need for it when a smartphone can provide a 3G or 4G connection to the car. I expect more apps to be supported in MyLink as well, although I’ve already streamed music over Bluetooth from my Rdio app. GM is expected to soon add a connected map service called BringGo that stores maps on a connected smartphone and uses them on MyLink for in-dash navigation.

We’re just starting down this road

Adding a Chevy Volt to our garage may make more sense for us than most others. We have excess electricity and we can go farther on that energy for less than the price of gasoline and with our driving habits we may not need to fill the gas tank for 6 weeks or more. I realize that not everyone fits into this category. But I think it’s important to share the details of this experience to help those interested learn more about the pros and cons of electric vehicles… and solar electric energy too, for that matter.

So as we do more traveling with the Volt, I’ll periodically share more of the experience. Until then, leave any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to address them!

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“(Solar) modules are not a commodity. We have seen a lot of problems — but we have a lot of modules that perform great, too,” said Brian Matthay, vice president in Well Fargo’s environmental finance group, during a panel discussion at Greentech Media’s solar conference just south of San Francisco this week. “You need to negotiate tough warranties with module suppliers … especially in this environment where people are cutting corners.”

Matthay wasn’t alone at the conference in expressing concerns about solar panel quality and therefore the risk of investing in solar projects, especially since the term “commodity” can imply a standardization of quality. Many solar power plants are now under construction to help utilities meet their state mandates to sell more renewable energy, and those power plants are supposed to perform well for 20-25 years. However, since the solar market is so new, there are very few solar energy projects that have been around for decades.

There has also been an emergence of new companies that finance solar panel projects — selling or leasing panels to consumers, or through crowd-sourcing — and these companies have been assuring their customers and investors that the panels will generate a certain return on the investment over time.

“Even within the same brand, there is a significant differentiation in quality, depending on whether they are from Malaysia, Thailand or China. There are differences in where the modules are built,” said Yuri Horwitz, CEO of Sol Systems, which brokers the sales of renewable energy credits for financing solar energy projects, at the Greentech Media event.

An oversupply of solar panels in the past two years is partly to blame for this worry about quality. Prices have plummeted as a result of a glut that began in early 2011. Dozens of solar manufacturers have shuttered factories of filed for bankruptcies. Maintaining good quality control can be challenging during these hard times.

Many solar panel makers have stepped up their publicity and sales efforts to try to set themselves apart. But with the falling prices -– and they are still dropping -– manufacturers might find their customers more interested in getting a good deal than hearing about technological advancements.

Meanwhile, many startups that have spent billions developing novel technologies have gone out of business or been sold for little money because they had a tough time raising enough money to build large-scale factories and compete on price.

“The number of discussions I’ve had with buyers in the last six months is it’s all about price. Price is the No. 1 thing for us,” said Jonathan Pickering, president of JA Solar’s business in Americas, at the Greentech Media conference. JA Solar makes cells and assemble them into panels.

“I’m worried about all the decisions that are made based on price. Surely when you are at a supermarket, you want to check the label, especially if you are going to eat this for the next 25 years. Is it organic? Does it have high quality?” Pickering said.

So what are some ways to cut the risk of using faulty solar equipment? The solar industry hasn’t yet come up with a good way to test the reliability of solar panels, Matthay said. So developing those tests would be helpful. Doing spot checks of a large shipment of panels for a project also will help, said Jenya Meydbray, CEO of PV Evolution Labs, which does safety and performance testing of solar panels.

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Another domain in which energy and water concerns collide is in desalination operations. One possible solution to Southern California’s reliance on water pumped over mountains from the north is to make use of the ocean of water breaking onto the local beaches.

A recent blurb in the New York Times announced plans for a desalination facility just north of San Diego that would produce 50 million gallons of water per day — aiming to supply 7 percent of regional demand by 2020. The price tag is roughly a billion dollars. The conversion factor is thus about $20 for every gallon-per-day of capacity (at large-scale; likely fails at the household level).

The estimated cost comes to about $4.80 per hcf, which is higher than the current price of water to the end-user in San Diego. But I’m not knocking it on these grounds: many of our future options will likely be more expensive than the magic carpet ride we’ve enjoyed on the foundation of fossil fuels.

How desalination works

Energetically, the most straightforward approach to desalination is evaporating water and collecting the condensed vapor. Put salt water (or anything moist) in a dark container with clear plastic or glass across the top and place it in the sun. The interior will heat up and evaporate water, which then condenses on the cooler plastic/glass cover. An appropriate sloped-roof geometry allows drip-collection of the water.

A water desalination plant in Brazil

Every gram (mL) of water vapor that escapes its liquid birthplace exacts a toll of 2257 J. This is a bit steep. Heating that same parent gram of water by 1°C only costs 4.18 J — which is why a pot of boiling water takes ages to boil away to nothing (see post on boiling water efficiency). A brute force approach like this would demand 2.4 kWh of thermal energy for every gallon of water produced (or 633 kWh/m³)!

Until I did the math, I dreamed of flowing ocean water through a system of shallow, covered trenches, generating fresh evaporated condensate. Low-tech, solar-driven, lovely! We might optimistically capture 50 percent of the incoming solar energy in the trough-collector, so that each square meter receiving about 5 kWh/day of incident energy could result in one gallon of water. Producing 10 percent of California’s demand would then require an area 60 km on a side, or a strip of land along California’s entire coastline about 2.5 km wide. Let’s call that infeasible. Darn.

But there are back doors. For one, waste heat from power plants (including nuclear) can be used as the source of energy in a form of co-generation. Also, water can be made to boil vigorously at room temperature in a mostly evacuated system once the pressure drops to about one-fortieth of an atmosphere (~20 Torr). In this scheme, it would take about 34 kWh to pump out 1,000 L (1 m³) of water molecules against this pressure differential: a bargain compared to the 633 kWh/m³ from direct heating.

A GE water desalination plant in Brazil

Most desalination plants use the multi-stage flash distillation process, which employs low-pressure chambers and recovers much of the heat of vaporization as the vapor condenses on the feedwater intake pipes, reducing the amount of direct heating required. These devices tend to achieve about 18–25 kWh/m³, which, again, is a bargain compared to direct heating.

Finally, reverse osmosis (RO) is another option, forcing water through membranes that exclude the saline ions. Typical RO installations achieve about 5–7 kWh/m³ (see, for instance, here or here). But the osmosis approach requires high-grade electricity, which if produced in the traditional manner requires about 17 kWh of thermal energy input per cubic meter of water produced. So really these prevalent techniques are not tremendously different energetically, although perhaps the osmosis approach is more finicky in terms of water preparation/filtering, gunked up membranes, etc.  RO wins out energetically if the electricity is from non-thermal sources (wind, solar, hydro).

Large scale desalination in California?

Okay, so now that we have an idea about how desalination is really done, what would it mean from an energetic standpoint if California tried to fulfill a substantial fraction of its water demand from desalination? I’ll use the approximate value of 20 kWh/m³ (thermal) hereafter.

Let’s start with San Diego’s effort to replace 7 percent of water demand in its 50 MGPD plant. This works out to 160 MW of thermal power. For scale, the San Diego region uses electricity at an average rate of 2.3 GW. So we’re talking a noticeable amount. Extrapolating to 100 percent desalination for San Diego, we get to 2.3 GW thermal, which would substantially increase local power generation demand. Economically, about half of the negotiated $4.80/hcf cost is in energy. It works out to 15 years to recoup the construction cost for the plant under the (poor) assumption of constant prices.

Don Pedro Dam, 1970

What about California as a whole? San Diego county is not a heavy agricultural center, so the problem will get harder if trying to satisfy the state’s needs (and therefore the country’s food needs given the national-scale importance of California’s agriculture). California uses 46 billion gallons of water per day. Supplying 25 percent of this via desalination would require 36 GW of thermal-equivalent power. California runs on 30 GW of electricity, and a total energy budget of 262 GW (thermal; from oil, gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, etc.—according to the EIA). That’s a substantial amount for 25 percent of our water needs.

Another way to slice this problem is to ask what fraction of California’s water could be provided by using the amount of energy that currently goes into pumping water around the state. We use 20 billion kWh of annual electricity for pumping, translating to about 6.5 GW of continuous thermal power. This amount of thermal power could meet 4.5 percent of California’s water needs via desalination. When we currently spend 8 percent of our electricity delivering 100 percent of our water, and would only meet 4.5 percent of our water needs by the same energy investment directed to desalination, we can appreciate the crunch.

Will the Nexus Vex Us?

What a surprise — the world is a complicated place with interdependencies. Is the water-energy connection more than an academically interesting tangle? I think so. Water is undeniably important to our physical survival, and energy is the main physical ingredient in our development of modern society. Shortages in either could have major impacts, and their entanglement means that a shortage in one could trigger a shortage in both. Seems like a problem — especially in light of increasing population pressure and intensifying effects of climate change.

Of course my “solution” is frequently to ask why we need as much energy or water or you-name-it-resource as it seems that we do. The fact that I live a perfectly functional life using less than 20 percent as much electricity, gas, and water as my San Diego cohort sure seems to suggest a viable path away from the crunch.

The good news in all of this is that when faced with difficult limitations, economic factors will assert themselves via the beloved mechanism of skyrocketing prices. People will naturally react by cutting back significantly, as my experience indicates is clearly possible. I am confident that San Diego could still function on a drastically reduced water budget, if needed. Every 60 ft² of roof area in San Diego collects enough rain to provide a gallon per day averaged over the year (1.4 m² collects 1 L/day). So thirst shouldn’t be a problem, even for a few million people. I’m not so optimistic about the odds of grass and ornamental plants surviving serious cutbacks. So while survival is not at stake, our accustomed ways of life may well be endangered.

The bad news is that we appear to be incapable as a society of reacting to a looming situation before economic forces drive us to change. By that time, we have often lost precious years to prepare for a new reality. We tend to want proof that something is a problem before we alter course. Not the smartest of approaches, in my book.

Ironically, the political “conservatives” tend to be the most resistant to conserving resources or approaching the future with a conservative, low risk mindset. Growth trumps caution. A key philosophical difference may lie in one’s sense of whether growth solves problems (debt, hunger, unemployment), or creates them. The answer does not have to be static — especially in a world of finite resources transitioning from the “empty” to the “full” state. We may well see an evolution from a world in which “growth the solution” more and more is perceived as “growth the problem.” I think attitudes are already shifting in this direction.

This post originally appeared on Tom Murphy’s blog, Do the Math: Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options.

Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and Ph.D. student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics.

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Christensen’s argument goes something like this: Innovations that disrupt markets nearly always start with a new, or newly applied, technology that offers a significant improvement over previous ones. But, great technology alone is not enough for success.

To truly shake things up in a market, innovations also need new business models as well as what Christensen calls “value networks” – new supply chains, channels to market and so on. Without such support, established leaders can squash or co-opt new players, sometimes killing or at least sidelining their innovations along with them. Sometimes it can take a long time for new business models and value networks to evolve in support of a “new” technology.

This fundamental shift could soon happen for fresh food – yes, I said food! – and at BrightFarms we’re building a new business model around produce. But before we explore the future of food, let’s take a look back at other disrupted sectors, such as the auto industry, digital music and clean power.

New business models

The automobile was invented and patented by Karl Benz around 1885. But automobiles did not displace horse-drawn carriages for everyday personal transportation until Henry Ford started mass-producing the Model T in 1908 and Congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act in 1916.  Electric vehicles may again disrupt the auto sector, though none of the EV makers have revolutionized the auto world quite yet.

Another example is MP3 technology, which – combined with online music downloads – has revolutionized the music industry. MP3 technology was invented in the late 1970s, but could not be commercialized until the industry adopted standards in the early 1990s. Even then, it took another decade for Apple to introduce the iPod and iTunes – a killer combination of inexpensive and easy to use hardware and legal online content.

Then there’s solar power. The sun as a source of energy dates back to ancient times, of course. But its first potentially mainstream applications – most notably a satellite powered by a small solar cell – emerged in the 1950s.

Solar technology research and development has continued over the last 50-plus years, but solar languished as a commercially viable alternative to fossil fuel-based sources of energy because of low oil prices.

We did not make significant progress in the deployment of solar until it made business and economic sense.  As the price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity rose, the price of solar in many markets suddenly made economic sense.  Even then, it took a business model innovation – the power purchase agreement (PPA) – for rooftop solar to take off.  The solar PPA enabled users to purchase solar-generated electricity as they consumed it, with no upfront cost of building a solar plant.

The future of food

But, how about food?  Yes, I said food.

Just as there has been a growing consumer demand for clean energy, there has also been a growing demand for fresh, locally grown produce. The USDA expects consumer demand for locally grown food in the U.S. to rise from an estimated $4 billion in 2002 to as much as $7 billion by 2012.

The centralization of food “manufacturing”, however, has resulted in a system of food built for travel, not taste. And our centralized food supply chain actually defies nature.  Our system grows tomatoes in Mexico to sell in St. Paul, Minnesota in the dead of winter – and by the way, it usually is a dead tasting tomato. With this long and complex supply chain, most Americans also have no idea where their food comes from.

Yet, we have had the technology for centuries to grow fresh local produce 365 days per year, throughout the U.S., in hydroponic greenhouse farms.

Hydroponic systems grow food with less water, land and pesticides, and they produce much higher yields.  “Hydroponics  (from the Greek words hydro [water] and ponos [labor]) is a centuries-old method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions in water and without soil.”

A controlled rooftop environment makes the entire system isolated from many of the causes of contamination (such as a field’s water and workers coming in contact with livestock run-off).

At BrightFarms we are deploying business model innovation for produce that could disrupt the produce industry. Think of the model like a solar PPA, but for produce – a “produce purchase agreement”. A PPA between BrightFarms and major supermarkets disintermediates the old system.

Instead of transporting produce thousands of miles, we finance, build and manage (in partnership with local farmers) greenhouse farms to grow and sell produce in the same community.

So, instead of paying for transportation, (the average food item in the U.S. travels 1,500 miles), shoppers are paying for better produce. Plus, our shorter and simpler supply chain results in fresher, safer, longer-lasting, tastier and more nutritious produce that uses fewer pesticides and less water and land, and that mitigates contaminants and run-off.

Hydroponic greenhouse technology, like solar, has been here all along. We just needed the PPA business model as a disruptive innovation to unlock it’s potential.

Paul Lightfoot is the CEO of BrightFarms, the only year-round producer of fresh and locally grown produce, soon to be nationwide. BrightFarms created a breakthrough business model, the Produce Purchase Agreement (PPA), to partner with supermarkets to create greenhouse farms nationwide.  BrightFarms delivers locally grown fresh tomatoes, lettuces and herbs to eliminate time and distance from the produce supply chain.

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The project, called Blythe Solar, had gotten a $2.1 billion loan guarantee offer from the U.S. Department of Energy in early 2011 for the first 500 MW of the project, and Southern California Edison had signed a contract to buy power from this first phase. It was a crown jewel in the project pipeline of Germany-based Solar Millennium, which specializes in concentrating solar thermal technology that uses mirrors and the sun’s heat to generate steam for running a turbine generator for producing electricity.

However Solar Millennium gave up that hefty loan guarantee offer when it announced in August 2011 that the project would no longer be using the solar thermal technology but would use solar panels instead. The company laid the ground work for that transition when it started to talk about how solar panels had become so much cheaper and therefore a more attractive choice. Back in May 2011, Solar Millennium said it was forming a joint venture with Solarhybrid and would use a combination of solar thermal and solar panels.

The two German companies finalized the deal to sell Blythe last Friday after first announcing their plan to do so last October. The negotiations seemed to have broken down last December when Solar Millennium filed for insolvency and said it had to do it because it wasn’t able to close the deal soon enough to get the money it needed to continue its operation. The deal involved not only the 1 GW plan but another 1.25 GW of projects in southwestern U.S. Solarhybrid plans to use only solar panels for the 2.25 GW projects.

Both companies declined to disclose the final price for the overall, 2.25 GW of U.S. solar project pipeline. Solar Millennium said it will get paid if Solarhybrid is able to successfully develop the projects and sell the power to utilities or sell the projects to power plant operators. The agreement also gives Solarhybrid a 70 percent stake in Solar Millennium.

Closing the deal means Solarhybrid will now have to start lining up financing and other pieces to move the projects forward, such as finding suppliers for the projects. Back in November, Solarhybrid said it was hoping to form a joint venture with First Solar or other companies to work on the 2.25 GW project pipeline. First Solar spokesman Alan Bernheimer declined to comment on the joint venture talk.

The opportunity to work on any of the projects would certainly be an attractive deal for First Solar or any other solar panel suppliers, particularly when First Solar – and others in the solar industry – expect to see smaller-scale projects being proposed and approved in the future in the U.S. That prospect is prompting First Solar, which also builds solar power plants, to look for other utility-scale project development opportunities elsewhere in the world, such as the Middle East and China.

First Solar is currently working on some of the largest solar power plants in the country, including two projects of 550 MW each in California. It also is building a 290 MW project in Arizona called Agua Caliente, which is owned by NRG Energy. The first 30 MW of the project is complete and started delivering power to the Pacific Gas and Electric last month, according to the California Public Utilities Commission’s renewable energy project tracker.

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