On Thursday solar installer SolarCity announced that it has signed up Goldman Sachs, and other investors, to create a $500 million fund to support leases for solar panels for home and business owners. With that much money, SolarCity can install some 110 MW worth of solar panels.

Solar leases are a contract between the building owner and SolarCity, whereby SolarCity pays the upfront cost of installing the system, owns and maintains the panels, and the building owner pays for the monthly electricity for the power from the panels over around 20 years. As Ucilia noted on GigaOM Pro today, the residential solar leasing market alone is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2016, according to GTM Research.

Some banks and even companies like Google have been willing to put hundreds of millions into these types of funds. SolarCity has been able to raise $1.7 billion in funding over its lifetime to finance installations from groups like U.S. Bancorp, Google, PG&E and Credit Suisse. Other solar financing companies — and the competition is now getting fierce — include Sungevity, OneRoof Energy, Sunrun and Clean Power Finance.

There’s such a demand for solar leases and financing that even some companies are falling behind on getting funding for these businesses. SunPower said earlier this month that demand for its residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them. Power company NRG Energy also wants to retry getting into this space, after trying out this market awhile back.

It’s not just banks and corporate do-gooders that want the opportunity to make a decent return — some 10 to 12 percent in some cases. Crowd-funding is starting to appear as an interesting blip on the radar. Startup Solar Mosaic says that it’s now raised $1 million from its crowd-funders for its solar panel systems, which offer around a 4.5 percent annual yield. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that commercial‐scale solar panel systems can reach returns of 8 percent to 14 percent in states like Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

As big power players, upstart solar financiers and even everyday crowd-funders grow these funds and receive the returns, this market will start to expand significantly. As a boom of solar panels continues to hit the U.S., various parties can make significant money off this transition. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that residential solar panels could be installed on 2.4 percent of U.S. houses by 2020.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

We’ve been covering this roller coaster ride, and Kleiner’s plays for years. Back in the summer of 2010, I first wrote “Greentech investing: not working for most;” and in early 2012 I wrote pieces on “the perils of cleantech investing,” as well as “We can thank Moore’s Law for the cleantech VC bust.” Last year I wrote “Kleiner Perkins web woes, add greentech,” and Kleiner is not so great at investing in auto tech.

The article does have a pretty amazing tidbit in there, that Doerr dipped into his own pocket for the $2.5 million that Miasole needed to make payroll before it was sold to Hanergy. But here are 5 things I think the article missed:

1). The long-term larger risk, but bigger payoff: A lot of the manufacturing and infrastructure-based cleantech startups have been taking longer to mature and reach commercialization than their digital peers, and they’ve also needed more money. But when some of these rare companies actually do reach scale and are successful, they could be massive players with huge markets. It’s just a different kind of betting — think putting a $100 on 22 on the roulette wheel, versus $5 on a hand of poker. A combination of the two — a small amount of the high risk investments, with a larger amount of the low risk investments — could be a good play.

That was one of the reasons why it seems like investor Vinod Khosla is still investing in cleantech startups. Khosla Ventures’ biocrude portfolio company KiOR — which the firm mostly owns – has a potential market that is no less than an opportunity to displace oil in transportation. Imagine if a venture investor owned a big chunk of Exxon Mobil.

2). The bigger trend of population growth and resource management: Many venture capitalists might be steering away from the cleantech investing style of years prior, but the overall global trends that originally drove these early cleantech investments will only continue to grow. These planetary trends aren’t wrong, it’s just that a bunch of the investments that were made weren’t that smart. The world will have 9 billion people by 2050, and energy, water and food will have to be managed much more carefully. The climate is also changing, because too many people are using too many fossil fuel-based resources. Technologies — including IT — that manage these resources and replace them with more sustainable ones will have large markets, particularly in developing countries.

3). Beyond venture: For many cases, the cleantech investing model isn’t a fit for venture capital. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good fit for other types of investors like private equity and project finance. Google has put a billion dollars into clean power projects, because those can deliver relatively safe and decent returns. Corporate investors — like GE or NRG Energy — are putting money into cleantech startups because it’s more than just a return, it’s a strategic investment. Cleantech innovation will also continue to come out of university and government labs and will be spurred along by government support of basic science research. Does cleantech innovation need a cleantech VC bubble to start changing the world?

4). Kleiner’s portfolio is more nuanced: The Reuters story accurately pointed out Kleiner’s struggling cleantech companies like Fisker, Miasole, Amonix, and others. And also rightly pointed out how the few cleantech companies it backed that went public — like Amyris and Enphase Energy — are now trading below their IPO prices. But the article didn’t mention the exit of solar thermal company Ausra, and also didn’t name some of the more successful and growing companies in Kleiner’s portfolio like Opower, Clean Power Finance, Enlighted, Nest, and RecycleBank. Opower is the energy software company to beat these days.

Honeywell & Opower’s iPad smart thermostat app

5). Cleanweb: See a trend in Kleiner’s more successful and growing cleantech startups? They’re mostly software and digital based. The latest trend in cleantech VC investing is the so-called “clean web,” or using social, mobile, and software to management energy and other resources. Some of these companies are pretty interesting and inspiring, like crowd-funding solar site Solar Mosaic.

Finally, as a side note, it’s now in vogue to point out how cleantech investors have lost money. Many have. But I think investors that have paved the way for world-changing innovation, and taken large risks to do so, should in part be lauded.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
• The perils of cleantech investing: KiOR and the long-term, high-risk view
• Defining success for cleantech companies

Can clean power projects — like solar panel rooftop installations and even wind farms — tap into this crowd-funding trend using a twist that actually makes money for its backers? The folks at startup Solar Mosaic hope so, and their very early success is a good indication that it can.

This week Solar Mosaic officially opened up its crowd-funding platform to residents of California and New York and raised over $300,000 for three new solar projects in less than a day. Four hundred investors participated, fully funding solar roof top projects for several schools in California, and the backers were offered a 4.5 percent annual return, with a 9-year term. Three hundred thousand dollars isn’t all that much when it comes to the potentials of crowd-funding or the finances needed for clean power infrastructure, but it’s the beginning of something new and potentially very powerful.

The drive behind crowd-funding

Even without the financial aspect, solar projects — and even other types of clean power — seem to be uniquely suited to the crowd-funding model. People put money into Kickstarter projects for a variety of reasons, but some of those reasons that line up nicely with solar power include: the feeling of participating in a community or being part of a movement, the feeling of helping with the creation process, and the feeling of being at the cutting edge of new things (art, gadgets, etc).

While solar projects clearly lack the ability to receive an exclusive piece of music or a wearable gadget before the rest of the world, solar projects have something that most movies and game development don’t: they have an underlying positive effect on the planet in that they provide fossil fuel-free power. This do-gooder aspect could, and will be, exploited to get funding from people who care about fighting climate change. And yes, while it might not be all that popular of a cause in the U.S., a growing amount of people do care about this issue.

Kickstarter isn’t about creating charities, but Kickstarter backers commonly are looking to help out in some way. As this avid Kickstarter backer told VentureBeat, he supports projects that he thinks should exist, even if there is no direct benefit to himself. I recently backed a pay-as-you-go solar project in Mwanza, Tanzania on another solar crowd-funding site called SunFunder, which doesn’t yet provide returns for investing. Kickstarter backers aren’t focused on making money.

The numbers behind Kickstarter show that projects are commonly backed by a combination of a few people that put in a lot of money, and a bunch of people that put in the smallest amounts. The community of backers doesn’t even have to be all that large to get a project funded, just some of the members have to be passionate enough to be willing to put in sizable amounts.

The early numbers seem to be similar for solar. The largest investment in Solar Mosaic’s three new projects this week was $30,000 (of the $300,000+ total) — so 10 percent of the total was backed by one investor. Yes, this is a little different because they’re getting their money back and more over the life of the term, but it often times works the same for Kickstarter-style crowd-funding.

A new form of investment

But now that Solar Mosaic has combined crowd-funding with the ability to deliver a reliable, low risk return for the backers, Solar Mosaic has moved beyond the realm of Kickstarter and into something more akin to putting some money into a mutual fund. A fair amount of people with enough savings would consider putting extra funds into an account that can deliver a 4.5 percent annual over a nine-year term.

In fact, one of the most surprising things to people when they hear about the Solar Mosaic model is how decent the return is on their money — it beats a savings account or most CDs in a bank. But a 4.5 percent is just the beginning. Another project on the site is going to return 6.38 percent. The figures could go up to potentially 8 or 10 percent for certain projects and certain terms. The investors make back their money on a percentage of the revenue provided by the monthly solar power bill over time.

The risks of investing in solar panels seems to be relatively low. Solar panels are commoditized now and the warranties are known. The types of buildings that are getting these solar panels — say a hospital or community center or school — also aren’t all that likely to stop paying their monthly electricity bill to keep the power on. However, that is a small risk.

Any surprising risk will also emerge as the platform matures. Hopefully any hurdles they face on the risks wouldn’t be big enough to taint the model.

New untapped funds

This type of crowd-funding investment could provide a disruptive source of funding for solar and clean power. Finding financing for solar projects from more conservative large banks and financial institutions has been an issue over the years.

Companies like Google — which are both progressive, and have ample funds — are trying to lead the way by having invested over $1 billion into 2 GW of clean power (or a Hoover’s dam worth of clean power). Google commonly says it’s partly funding these projects because the return is good. Other solar financing companies, like SolarCity and Clean Power Finance, have emerged in recent years to take advantage of the hesitancy of financial institutions.

But still there is a lot of financing that could be tapped by clean power but isn’t yet. And that could be organized by crowd-funding. According to a paper from Bloomberg last Summer, if one percent of retail investments in savings accounts, money markets and U.S. Treasuries was put into crowd-funding of solar projects, that would deliver more than $90 billion for the creation of clean energy projects.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The opportunities for the Internet and clean power
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t bright spots on the horizon, and major opportunities for certain kinds of solar startups in 2013. Here’s our list of 13 solar startups to watch in 2013 — some may be under the radar, but all have managed to do one of the following recently: raise money, build factories, launch innovative products and services or otherwise make progress despite the hard times (or because of it).

1). Solar Mosaic: The company brings solar power investments to the masses with its recently launched public online site. Residents of California and New York (as well as accredited investors) can invest in any of the projects for as little as $25 and get what should be a steady, long-term return (of 4.5 percent for the first projects). The company sold out three projects less than 24 hours after the launch this week.

2). Alta Devices: Portable solar chargers could cut the number of batteries a soldier must carry onto the battle field and provide an alternative source of power for drones. Alta Devices is focusing on the military first with its highly efficient solar cells and hopes to use these contracts to scale up manufacturing, slash costs and eventually enter the more conventional solar market where much cheaper solar cells now dominate.

3). Clean Power Finance: The company raises funds to offer power purchase agreements or leases for solar panel installers to market and sell them to homeowners. The company also launched an energy credit trading service and assembled a database of local permitting rules in 2012 so that retail service providers could spend less time and money for figuring out the paperwork they need to do.

4). GlassPoint Solar: With its novel greenhouse design for its solar thermal energy equipment, GlassPoint Solar is targeting the oil industry with its solar steam production, which pries loose oil from wells for easier extraction. Oil companies are warming up to using solar energy to produce steam rather than natural gas, which remains expensive in regions such as the Middle East.

5). QBotix: The company uses robots that move along a tracking system and tilt solar panels during the day to follow the sun. GPS and wireless technology are used to detect problems and monitor the systems.

6). Genability: How do you show customers the amount of energy savings they could achieve or money they could make by going solar? You need accurate data on utility rates, and that’s what Genability specializes in. The startup collects and crunches electric rates — which change often — from utilities across the country. SunPower, SolarCity and SunEdison are customers.

7). Semprius: The prices of silicon solar cells have tumbled in recent years thanks to mega factories by manufacturers mostly in China. To compete, solar cell manufacturing startups must develop something much more efficient that can find other uses as well. Semprius, like Alta Devices, is achieving this by using gallium-arsenide for its cells, but it also is making the solar panels for housing them. The company raised $7.5 million and opened a small factory in North Carolina last year and is targeting the military as well.

8). Stion: After Solyndra’s bankruptcy in 2011, few venture capitalists wanted to invest in using copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) to make ultra-thin solar panels (that’s the same material Solyndra was working with). Many CIGS startups went out of business or got scooped up in firesales. Stion has survived so far after lining up investments in Taiwan and Korea, and it started shipments from its Mississippi factory last year.

9). SoloPower: The company is another CIGS startup that has made progress toward commercializing its technology while its peers disappeared into oblivion. SoloPower turned on its 100MW factory in Oregon last year and secured a federal loan guarantee to help it expand if it meets milestones.

10). SCS Renewables: As interest in investing in solar power generation grows, investors will want to know where they can find quality projects. SCS Renewables runs a match-making service that also helps developers to massage their projects into presentable shapes in front of banks and other investors.

11). Silevo: With a new type of hybrid solar cell technology and its first factory in China instead of the U.S., where it’s headquartered, Silevo has mapped out a plan to scale up production and keep production costs low enough to attract customers with its efficient cells. 

12). TenKsolar: Out there in Minneapolis, tenKsolar has designed a wave-like solar energy system that pair solar panels with separate panels that are lined with a reflective film to direct light to the solar cells. The unusual design caught the attention of Korean conglomerate Hanwha, which led a $15.5 million round in 2012.

13). OneRoof Energy: The startup teams up with roofers and electricians to sell rooftop solar systems and financing products such as leases as part of new roofing or re-roofing projects. OneRoof Energy is part of a group of solar installers, such as the now public SolarCity and high-profile startups Sungevity and SunRun.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Solar Mosaic still has one solar project available at this point that’s only for accredited investors. In total Solar Mosaic says it saw 400 investors put in over $313,000 — in increments of between $25 and $30,000 — with an average investment of nearly $700 over the past day. The projects will provide investors with a 4.5 percent annual return, with a 9-year term.

The two-year-old company has built a Kickstarter-style crowd-funding platform, but in contrast to Kickstarter, Solar Mosaic provides returns to backers of its projects. That’s because solar panel roof systems create revenue, as the building owner pays for the solar electricity commonly provided through a lease, with a 20-year contract. The crowd-funded money goes to installing the solar panels, and then the investors get a return via the monthly electricity bill.

So far, including the beta period where Solar Mosaic was enabling a small group to invest in solar roofs, Solar Mosaic says it has raised $1.1 million from more than 700 investors. The company has raised $2.5 million in venture funding (to run the company) so far and according to Dow Jones VentureWire is planning to raise a $10 million Series B.

(Disclosure: I invested a bit to test it out and see what the process was like).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• The opportunities for the Internet and clean power
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times

The company was founded back in October 2010, and I wrote one of the first profiles of Solar Mosaic in October 2011. It took the startup a little over two years to test out its beta Kickstarter-style platform and become registered to share securities with the public. Last year, it got a vote of confidence from the crowd funding bill. The company is backed by Spring Ventures.

For potential investors, solar roofs can provide a low-risk return — anywhere between 4 and 12 percent on an investment — kind of like investing in a mutual fund. Building owners lease solar panel systems and enter into a contract for a fixed, low electricity rate, commonly over about two decades. Solar Mosaic organizes the crowd-funding to get the solar rooftop installed, and works with a solar lease provider like Sungevity. Once the project gets crowd-funded, the rooftop solar panel installation process starts.

Solar loans are backed by a revenue-producing asset (electricity) and the building owners pay for the solar electricity monthly in the same way they have been paying their monthly utility bill. The buildings owners aren’t all that likely to default on their electricity payments, and the costs, timelines and returns for solar panels are pretty transparent as the technology has become increasingly commoditized. Another company that has created a site for crowd-funded solar is SunFunder.

Solar Mosaic says its first investments will offer a 4.5 percent annual return, including servicing fees, with a nine-year term. The company says it is offering “a better expected yield than most investment products available to the general public.” The company will hold a press call at 10 PST, and we’ll update this story after the call.

Update:

There are three new solar projects that residents of California and New York can put money in as of Monday morning, including solar panels on the roofs of affordable housing projects in Corte Madera, Calif., Salinas, Calif., and San Bruno, Calif.

The company said on a media call that the SEC approval process took longer than expected because what Solar Mosaic has been working on is so novel, and because the SEC also has been slow on implementing the Jobs Act.

See our previous stories on Solar Mosaic:

• Solar Mosaic, the Kickstarter of solar aims high
• The Kickstarter of solar could make you money starting this Summer
• How crowd-funding could revolutionize solar
• The clean energy revolution will be crowd funded

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• The opportunities for the Internet and clean power
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times

But there were also quite a few things that excited me this year, which in honor of our upcoming day of thanks, I’ve decided to call out. Here are 10 things to be thankful for in cleantech.

1). Obama won: Thank goodness. The entire cleantech sector dodged a bullet — and breathed a sigh of relief — as the votes rolled in and President Obama was re-elected for a second term. Obama delivered an unprecedented amount of cleantech funding: billions in incentives for clean power, electric cars and energy efficiency through the stimulus package. While the incentives won’t likely be as high as they were when the stimulus package was determined, if Mitt Romney had won, it would have likely been a real blow for cleantech. Romney is a self-professed coal-lover, who used speeches to point out misspending for clean power companies, and made a now infamous joke (post Sandy) about climate change.

2). New solid customer: Internet infrastructure: A growing amount of Internet companies — and web infrastructure providers — are looking for ways to add more clean power to their data center energy consumption mix, and are also looking for ways to be less reliant on the power grid. Some of the leaders in this area include Google, eBay, Microsoft, and Apple, and many of these companies have invested in both solar systems, energy efficiency technology and even fuel cell farms. Fuel cell maker Bloom Energy has managed to find a niche and growing market here.

There’s also a growing trend of IT companies looking to utilize low power servers — servers built off of low power cell phone chips. AMD this year acquired startup SeaMicro, and weeks ago AMD launched its SeaMicro low power server. Calxeda just raised $55 million to move toward commercializing its own low power server product.

3). Digital green, or clean web: Cleantech — from a VC and entrepreneur perspective — is in a transitional state. But in the meantime, clean technologies that are based on IT — like mobile, big data, cloud computing, software — are still seeing a lot of innovation and investment. Examples of startups in this sector include Opower, Nest, Solar Mosaic and Sungevity. Investors are calling this sector different things — Greenstart calls it digital green, Spring Ventures calls it Clean Web, and MDV calls it where cleantech meets IT — but it all means the same thing to them: a way to make money that more closely mimics making VC investments in web and mobile companies.

4). Smart thermostats: A particularly interesting area to me in terms of the smart grid and cleantech startups is the growing use of thermostats that are connected to the internet and that can smartly cut building energy use. Nest says it’s sold in the mid-hundreds of thousands of its learning thermostats, which can learn the users behavior and shave off energy consumption overtime. EcoFactor’s service is being used in a commercial deployment in Las Vegas, and Opower’s software is being used in three utility trials with Honeywell’s thermostats. Startup EnergyHub is also working on providing the software for smart thermostats.

Connected thermostats could be the answer to what utilities call demand response, which is basically turning down the energy use of its customers during peak times of day. The customers agree to the programs and can see lower energy bills. If the system is automatic and non-intrusive — which can be done using smart thermostat analytics — customers are far more likely to join the programs, and the utility’s results are better.

5). Tesla: Electric car maker Tesla has one of the most ambitious ideas in cleantech, and has actually — mostly — delivered on its goals. Yes, it was slow to get its estimated volume of Model S cars out to owners in 2012, but it’s on track to deliver its new estimates over the coming months. The company is also one of the few cleantech ideas that have captured the imagination of the public, and recently won Motor Trends’s car of the year award — the first time in history that an electric car won it.

6). The learning curve: Like I said, cleantech is in a time of transition. And I think that’s a good thing. As Greenstart founding partner Mitch Lowe said on a recent panel I moderated, fewer companies are being funded, but that just means the bar is higher. While bubbles are fun — like the one that grew in cleantech between 2006 and early 2008 — bubbles mean a lot of stupid money is flowing. Hopefully the smarter money of the next 18 months will deliver some breakthrough cleantech startups.

7). Cheap solar panels: One of the most dramatic clean power economic factors to emerge in 2012 occurred via super cheap solar panels coming out of China. While rock bottom solar panels make a difficult market for competing solar manufacturers, that ecosystem has created a boom in solar panel installations. In the U.S. there are now 250,000 rooftop solar panel installations, and companies like SolarCity are seeing large growth.

8). Wish for big ideas: Outside of cleantech, in the general tech and IT markets, there’s been a growing drumbeat of entrepreneurs and investors calling for greater attention on “big ideas.” While there can be easy money in social media and mobile apps ($1 billion for Instagram), there’s an emerging discussion around technology being used for higher aims, like solving problems for resource constraints. Investor Peter Thiel has been a chief champion of this approach and recently created a growth fund that will tackle big problems — the fund has already backed firms like compressed air energy storage startup LightSail Energy. They’re not calling it cleantech, but it is under the hood.

9). Meat 2.0: When the population explodes to 9 billion people by 2050, livestock for consumption could become a constrained resource — particularly because the emerging middle class in developing countries are increasing their meat consumption. That’s one of the reasons that innovation is occurring around fake meat. As Greentech Media wrote, paraphrasing a VC: “having a “fake meat” company in one’s VC portfolio was becoming a must-have, like having a cloud computing firm or a failed thin-film solar company.” Beyond Meat is one startup and Sand Hill Foods seems to be another. Modern Meadow Meat is a startup working on meat manufacturing, with backing from Thiel.

10). Collaborative consumption: And another sector of cleantech that’s not really cleantech: sharing goods. The next-generation of young people are less interested in owning things, and more interested in gaining access, or using things as a service. That makes the use of goods more efficient and sustainable. You don’t need to buy a car, because you can pay for access via Zipcar. There’s tons of startups in this space from giants like Airbnb, to new comers like electric scooter rental startup Scoot Networks.

Image courtesy if Aine D, waywuwei,

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy

The idea behind this emerging sector is that investing in the construction of putting solar panels on rooftops can provide a relatively low risk return on the upfront investment. Building owners generally lease solar equipment and enter into a contract to pay a fixed, low, electricity rate, commonly over about two decades. Over the past several years solar financing companies — like Clean Power Finance, Sungevity and Solar City — have emerged to provide the upfront capital, which can generally deliver around a 12 percent return.

But now new startups have emerged that want to leverage crowdfunding to provide that solar project finance capital. Solar Mosaic is the most well known of these companies, and the startup recently raised $2.5 million from venture capitalists and received a $2 million grant from the Department of Energy. Other startups named in Bloomberg’s paper include Abundance Generation in the UK, and SunFunder in the U.S.

Solar Mosaic, when it launches its financial products as soon as this Summer, could offer one- to three-year notes with something like a six-percent return, one of the company’s investors told me last year. The company is in a quiet period right now, but in April filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to offer “Solar Power Notes to the public, with proceeds going to fund solar power projects,” notes the Bloomberg paper.

Beyond the financial return, crowdfunding and solar have other reasons to fit together. Kickstarter has exploded as a way for crowds to fund projects that they connect with from art to technology to videos. The experience is largely an emotional one, where people donate generally small sums of money because they feel compelled to support the project. Solar roofs — with their carbon-free energy potential — could use crowdfunding to benefit from this same emotional connection.

As the Bloomberg paper points out, these crowd funding solar startups will need to build that type of emotional relationship with their potential investors, keeping investors up to date on their projects, clean power produced and communities affected. I bought into Solar Mosaic’s beta solar program last year and helped fund a project in Oakland, and I can report that they were already doing this type of outreach.

The Bloomberg paper also makes a good point about how crowdfunding and solar could work well for solar debt, which is somewhat low risk, but that investors should probably shy away from crowdfunding via equity. Having unsavvy investors buying into high risk technology startups, could be a really bad idea.

Yet despite the risks, the paper concludes:

Crowdfunding commitments to clean energy would become meaningful for clean energy in an absolute sense, even if they still remain a tiny relative proportion of all retail funds available for investment.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• Content monetization: News licensing and syndication still need marketplaces and infrastructure
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall

SolarBridge raises $25 million, series D: SolarBridge makes solar microinverters, which are miniature versions of conventional central solar inverters that are necessary for converting the direct current generated by solar panels to alternating current for feeding the grid or to be used onsite. Instead of matching a central inverter to a dozen panels at a time, each microinverter serves one panel. This design allows the microinverters to calculate and adjust the optimal energy output of each solar panel and prevents poor-performing panels from affecting the power output of the best-performing ones.

SolarBridge raised $25 million in a series D round led by Shea Ventures and including Battery Ventures, Rho Ventures and Osage University Partners. The company has raised more than $71 million to date, including a $19 million series C round last year. SolarBridge says the funding will be used to launch “new hardware and software products, increase sales and marketing efforts and expand the company’s operations globally.”

Solar microinverters are the future of solar inverters, but are still at an early market phase. Enphase Energy is another leader in the microinverter space and Enphase went public earlier this year.

Redwood Systems raises $11.75 million, series C: Redwood Systems makes a control and sensor system for LEDs that runs over an optimized version of Ethernet cables. The company just closed $11.75 million in a series C round from investors including Battery Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, Index Ventures and Mitsui & Co, Ltd. Japanese conglomerate Mitsui started backing the company a year ago.

Redwood Systems is four years old and some of its customers include SAP, Volkswagen, Johnson Controls and most recently, Facebook. Commercial building owners and data center operators can use Redwood’s LED system to cut the amount of lighting used throughout the building — in some cases, up to 70 percent over standard non-networked fluorescent lighting systems. LEDs are more efficient than fluorescents, but Redwood’s management system also monitors the building environment, including temperature and room occupancy, and can dim and manage the lights to help maximize efficiency.

Lighting Science Group raises $140 million: LED maker Lighting Science Group has closed on $140 million in private funding, led by private equity firm Riverwood Capital, and including Pegasus Capital Advisors. Lighting Science Group is already publicly traded on the OTC bulletin board, and over a year ago indicated that it wanted to go public on the Nasdaq and raise $150 million.

Lighting Science designs and makes LED lamps and other light fixtures for the residential, commercial and industrial market. The company has been selling LED lighting for nearly a decade and owns factories in Satellite Beach, Florida and Monterrey, Mexico.

GreenBytes raises $12 million, series B: GreenBytes makes data de-duplication storage gear, which are tools that reduce redundant data as well as store data on energy efficient storage solid state drives. The company raised a $12 million series B round from Battery Ventures and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.

“Primary storage”, or top tier storage, is comprised of hardware designed for quick data access and are usually reserved for active or just-created data.  Beneath this are “secondary tiers” devoted to backup storage, archives and storage of lower priority business data. GreenBytes’ appliances are deployed close to the top tiers of storage so that fewer data trickles down to other tiers and the greater the potential cost and energy savings overall. Despite the promise of data deduplification, IT managers are still wary about it, according a GigaOM Pro report “De-Duplicating the Storage Industry” (subscription required).

Solar Mosaic raises $2.5 million: According to a filing, the kickstarter of solar, SolarMosaic has raised $2.5 million. The company is just about to launch the truly disruptive part of its business: as early as this Summer SolarMosaic plans to start offering people a way to buy into rooftop solar panel projects, and make back a return on their investment over time.

Soladigm raises close to $5 million in debt, option: Soladigm, which makes electrochromic “smart” windows that tint when electricity is applied to them, has raised $5 million in debt and options according to a filing. The startup was founded in 2007 and is based in Milpitas, Calif.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• De-Duplicating the Storage Industry
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• 2010: LED’s Watershed Year

Essentially for the investor it will be like buying the safe and predictable return of a mutual fund. The way it works is that a building owner will lease the solar equipment and enter into a contract for a fixed, low, electricity rate, commonly over about two decades. Solar Mosaic is working with solar lease providers like Sungevity, but Solar Mosaic is the one that organizes the crowd-funding of the money to get the solar rooftop installed. Once the project gets funded Kickstart-style, the rooftop solar panel installation process starts.

Solar rooftops are a surprisingly low risk investment. As Daniel Rosen, co-founder of Solar Mosaic put it in an article for us last month: solar loans are backed by a revenue-producing asset (electricity) and the building owners are just continuing to pay for the electricity that they are used to paying for day in and day out. There is little risk to investors that the buildings owners will default on their electricity payments, particularly since they are also saving money on their energy bills from day one. In addition the costs, timelines and returns for solar panels are pretty transparent as the technology has become increasingly commoditized.

Right now, banks are one of the major ways that solar rooftops get funded in the U.S. An installer like SolarCity (which plans to IPO soon) will raise a several-hundred-million-dollar fund from a bank to provide financing options like leases to building and home owners for solar panels. The bank can get a good return on the investment over time — some estimate 12 percent. Some corporations are starting to see the money-making potential of solar rooftops, too, and Google has created a $280 million fund for SolarCity, and a $75 million fund for Clean Power Finance. Warren Buffett is investing in these types of solar projects, too.

Make money off of the sun

Solar Mosaic is looking to bring that money-making opportunity down to the everyday investor (including you and me). The big question will be how much of a return will investors and everyday people be able to make off of funding these projects?

Nick Allen, a Partner with Spring Ventures — Solar Mosaic’s investor — told me last year that he thought the solar projects could one day provide something like a six-percent return, and the company could offer returns on one- to three-year notes. “How many people are happy with the one-percent return they get from their bank?” Allen explained to me, adding that the concept is “an exciting emerging asset class where people can invest money, create solar and do well.”

Solar Mosaic had planned to start offering this type of return in 2012, but the momentum has been accelerated because of the recently passed Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups (or JOBS) Act. The series of six bills bundled together — which had the support of Google, Steve Case, Angel List and many others — makes it easier for startups to gain access to capital including crowdfund investing. Solar Mosaic was founded in October 2010 and funded by Spring Ventures and a group of angel investors.

Beyond the soon-to-be-launched money-making aspect of SolarMosaic, solar seems to be the perfect application for crowd-funding. Like Kickstarter, lenders to projects are inspired by the project itself and want to have “skin in the game,” as Allen explained it to me. The lenders are also motivated to engage with the project and promote lead generation.“Solar is viral, crowd funding makes it more so,” said Allen.

I’ve experienced it first hand. I bought a $100 “tile” in Solar Mosaic’s first five solar projects, which were all fully funded with $350,000 and 400 investors (one “celebrity investor” gave $250,000). As soon as the Oakland solar project that I helped fund got fully funded last month, I got really excited and sent the link to all of my friends. I think the idea of combining the crowd-funding model with solar rooftops and adding in the potential to make money could be truly disruptive.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• The opportunities for the Internet and clean power
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times