“Our residential lease business remains strong, with demand outstripping our financial capacity in the first quarter,” said Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, during a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.

The Silicon Valley company signed over 2,100 leases during the first quarter, bringing the cumulative total to over 16,200. SunPower launched the lease program in 2011. The lease sign up rate is roughly the same as in 2012, during which it signed up 11,415 of them through its network of dealers, or roughly 2,800 of them per quarter.

Homeowners who sign leases, which run 20 years, pay a monthly fee for using the solar electricity from the solar panels installed on their rooftops. They don’t own the equipment and aren’t responsible for its maintenance or repairs. SunPower raises money from investors to finance the leases. The investors, which include banks and companies such as Google, put up the money partly to take advantage of a federal tax credit that amounts to 30 percent of the price of all the solar energy system installed using their funds.

Since the lease business is fairly new, it hasn’t been making a big impact on SunPower’s financial performance though. The company’s shares shot up 17 percent after its earnings announcement mainly because it delivered better financial results than expected.

The company generated $635.4 million in revenue for the first quarter, up 29 percent from the $494.1 million for the first quarter in 2012. It narrowed its losses to $54.7 million , or $0.46 per share, from $74.5 million, or $0.67 per share, year over year.

SunPower makes solar panels and develops power plants. It’s building two huge projects in California.  It has installed over 90 percent of the solar panels for the 250MW power plant called California Valley Solar Ranch, which is owned by NRG Solar. It recently started building two projects totaling 579MW that their owner, MidAmerican Solar, called Antelope Valley Solar Projects.

Internationally, SunPower continues to do well in Japan, a hot market that began offering fat incentives for solar energy generation after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011. Through mostly Toshiba and a little through Sharp, SunPower’s seeing more demand for its solar panels in Japan than it had anticipated, Werner said. Sales volumes doubled from 2011 to 2012 and could double again in 2013, said Howard Wenger, the company’s head of global sales and development.

Most of the company’s solar panels are going to residential rooftops in Japan. Living space tends to be small (and more efficiently used) in Japan than it’s the case in the United States, so SunPower’s highly efficient solar panels are a good fit, its executives said. Its silicon solar panels can convert about 21 percent of the sunlight into electricity, higher than other silicon solar panels on the market today. Silicon solar panels accounted for 89 percent of the solar panels made in 2012, according to GTM Research.

SunPower has had to cut production and costs in the past two years as the global solar market saw a pricing collapse from an oversupply of solar panels.

The average wholesale prices worldwide fell 50 percent from 2011 to 2012 while demand for them grew only 5 percent during 2012, said NPD SolarBuzz. Dozens of solar panel makers around the world have filed for bankruptcy.

SunPower executives said they have beaten their cost-cutting goals.

“It’s brutal to be exclusively a module manufacturer,” Werner said. “As you look at SunPower, we moved from modules originally to systems a few years ago, and what we sell today is energy in the form of leases or PPA (power purchase agreements).”

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

• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010

Founded in 2008, Consert connects devices in the home like a water heater, heating and air conditioning units, pool pumps, and thermostats. The connected devices all talk to a smart meter, which has a Consert gateway inside, and Consert had been utilizing Verizon’s 3G network to connect back to its data center.

The Consert service monitors the energy consumption of these devices and uses them to participate in automated energy efficiency programs. Overall Consert had said its system can help a home owner save 10 to 20 percent on an energy bill. The company had done some trials in Fayetteville, N.C., with Rockwood Electric Utility, with CPS Energy, and Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, but I hadn’t heard of many large commercial deployments.

Consert had managed to bring in a variety of high profile backers including GE Energy Financial Services, Verizon Ventures, Qualcomm and Constellation Energy. The company had raised at least $25 million.

The companies wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal. It seems to me like this is yet another one of those startups that found itself knee-deep in the valley of death between pilots and commercial deployments and needed more funding or an acquirer to gear up. Toshiba says Consert will be integrated into Landis+Gyr.

The Consert service is also the latest startup to look to tackle the Internet of Things sector, where everything has a connection to deliver greater functionality. Check out Stacey Higgenbotham’s awesome Internet of Things primer this morning.

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

• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Smart Energy Emerges as a Layer of Telco’s Smart Home
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010

An example of this change can be seen in one of my most-read posts ever here on GigaOM. Out of more than 7,500 posts I’ve written, one of my most viewed is “A quick guide to netbooks” from September 2008. No matter what news was hitting the tech cycle, this post on netbooks kept finding its way in front of readers who searched for netbook information on the web. Even a year after publication, the post was appearing on a daily basis near the top of our stats. Then 2010 arrived, and with it, the first credible consumer tablet in Apple’s iPad.

Charles Arthur provides four reasons for the netbook’s demise, but by analyzing the stats of my netbook guide post, I suggest that the revamped tablet market was the beginning of the end for netbooks. True, these are completely different products in terms of form factor, design, operating systems and supported applications. But both share an important commonality: relatively inexpensive mobile computing devices.

Let’s face it: There are only a few reasons that netbooks even became a “thing.” You could get one for between $200 and $400, you could run the apps you wanted to, and you could take them everywhere. The idea of a small, cheap laptop that ran all the same software your larger notebook or desktop could run was appealing at a time when the global economy began a huge downturn. The timing of netbooks was simply right.

I know because I bought the very first one available  in 2007 and used it to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in 2008: All of my posts were written on a small Asus Eee PC. I later upgraded to an MSI Wind machine and then a $399 Toshiba model in 2009. For half the cost of a full-sized laptop, I had something more portable that lasted longer on a single battery charge.

The idea of a netbook then morphed into a smartbook: A small laptop that ran not on Intel chips, but ARM chips used in smartphones. The concept was great, but with Apple’s iPad introduction in 2010, I immediately suggested that smartbooks were DOA; a point that Qualcomm confirmed nine months later.

Some current netbook owners will continue to cling to their device, mainly because it meets their needs of Microsoft Windows applications in a small laptop, and that’s fine: One should always use the best tool for the task at hand.

Our tasks, in terms of computing needs, however, have changed. Legacy application suites are getting replaced by a seemingly never-ending stream of smartphone and tablet applications. Cloud services for productivity and storage are the new Microsoft Office and hard drive. Touch computing is becoming the norm, not the exception, and mobile operating systems are optimized for it. Simply put: Netbooks are just another example of old-school computing and world is moving on. Farewell netbooks; it was fun while it lasted.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Google’s Chromebook initiative as it can appear on the surface that the company is continuing to offer a netbook experience: Low-cost, small laptops that run for hours at a time. There’s one key difference, however: The entire interface is a modern desktop browser that works as a jack-of-all-trades for creating and consuming web content. Best of all, the simplicity of the software brings all the benefits of the web without the distractions, upkeep or power-consuming features brought by a legacy desktop environment.

That doesn’t mean I think Chromebooks will take over the world as netbooks were expected to do, but the different software approach and deep integration with Google services give Chromebooks a chance to survive beyond the age of netbooks.

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

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Is Android broken and if so, will Google fix it?

First launched in 2006, Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics looks at environmental conditions for electronics manufacturers like if companies use toxic materials in their gadgets, if they take back old products for recycling, how much energy they use to produce and ship their gadgets, and how clean their energy sources are. Companies also score points by setting carbon emissions reductions goals and for advocating politically for sustainability. The top companies in the latest guide are Wipro, HP, Nokia, and Acer, while the bottom companies are Sharp, Toshiba and RIM.

This was the first time that Indian firm Wipro was on the list, and its debut at number one, was prompted largely by Wipro’s “climate leadership,” says Greenpeace. Wipro says it plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 44 percent by 2015 and achieve 85 percent of those emissions reductions through the use of clean power. Wipro also has worked closely with the Indian government on solar and clean power policies.

The Indian government has itself developed an aggressive clean power plan, which might be more aspirational than realistic. But India is hoping to install 3 GW of solar by 2016, compared with the 54 MW of solar installed in 2010. And to meet the growing demand for power — as the country’s economy grows — India plans to add 100 GW of power generation over the next five years, and that will be made up by mostly coal and clean power.

While Wipro is willing to be aggressive on clean power and greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals, the Greenpeace rankings find that in contrast almost all of the other electronics giants “are still heavily dependent on climate changing dirty energy sources in their supply and manufacturing chains.” A Greenpeace spokesperson writes:

Most consumers would be surprised to hear that many devices consume more electricity before they’re ever purchased just in their manufacturing than they do after we buy them and charge them every night. This “embedded energy” is the next big frontier for consumer electronics companies who want to be green.

Apple came in at the 6th spot on Greenpeace’s guide, down from its 4th spot in 2011, but up from a former ranking at number nine. Greenpeace has blasted Apple in the past, despite its massive solar and fuel cell farms being built in North Carolina.

Image courtesy of fraboof.

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

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Report: The Future of Netbooks!

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

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Social-TV apps and consumer behavior

While a centralized block of batteries has commonly been used for backup power for data centers, in more recent years companies like Google have re-architected servers and racks to have their own distributed backup battery systems, which can be more efficient because the systems can reduce conversion losses. Akamai says that this type of innovation has made it possible for CDNs to also employ individual batteries at the rack and server level, which can likewise reduce inefficiencies.

The researchers found that batteries used for a CDN could provide power savings of up to 14 percent and that could increase up to 35 percent if new types of servers were created that could move in and out of different levels of energy (sleep, half awake, fully awake etc). Most servers are either fully on or off, which leads to a lot of wasted energy. (See, my article on why servers should be more like people article on GigaOM Pro).

The researchers found that these savings could be achieved even with only one full discharge/charge cycle of the batteries every three days. The result, according to Akamai, is that batteries should be “a key element in future distributed network architecture.” Sitaraman plans to present the findings of the paper on Oct. 16th at the ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing in San Jose, Calif.

We’ll address data center energy efficiency, clean power and more our at Structure:Europe conference taking place on October 16 and 17 in Amsterdam.

Images of Toshiba battery and battery systems at Chevron’s microgrid in Dublin, Calif.

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

• A near-term outlook for big data
• How to Make Cloud Computing Greener
• How tomorrow’s mobile-centric data centers will look

Transphorm says it’s raised a round of $35 million (series E) led by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) — a partnership between the Japanese government and two-dozen Japanese companies like Sharp and Toshiba — as well as power electronics giant Nihon Inter Electronics Company (NIEC). Existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital also participated in the round.

Five-year-old Transphorm makes energy-efficient power conversion devices out of the semiconductor material gallium nitride, instead of the more commonly used silicon. Power conversion devices are used in any device that uses electricity, like electronics, HVAC systems, servers, data centers, electric car chargers and solar panels.

Transphorm says its energy-efficient power conversion devices can eliminate up to 90 percent of electric conversion losses. The company has been making strategic products in its early days, like power diodes made of gallium nitride. Transphorm is also working with solar inverter company Enphase Energy (also backed by Kleiner) to develop a solar power conversion device using financial support from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program.

Transphorm didn’t invent gallium nitride as a semiconductor; other companies have been tinkering with the material for years. But most companies that use gallium nitride are working on low-voltage conversion, while Transphorm is looking to crack high-voltage conversion. Transphorm’s products will likely be more expensive than comparable silicon ones in the short term.

Transphorm has now raised $104 million. The news today also includes a business partnership with Nihon Inter Electronics to help Transphorm move into commercial high-volume manufacturing. Check out our video interview with Transphorm CEO Umesh Mishra from Green:Net 2011.

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

• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010

The network will test out solar power, energy storage and electric grid management and produce data and analyses over the next six months, said Japanese solar panel maker, Kyocera, which is taking part in the project. The project also involves the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities. NEDO itself is a group of government, research institutions and private tech companies such as Kyocera, Toshiba and Hitachi.

The participants held a ceremony this week to kick off the operation of the $52 million project, which involves a micro-grid and a “smart house” demonstration in Los Alamos. The Japanese consortium also is working on a smart building project in a mixed-use community in Albuquerque called Mesa del Sol.

NEDO and its affiliated Japanese companies decided to head to New Mexico to test smart grid technologies with the local utility in Los Alamos partly because Japanese utilities aren’t as flexible or able to act as quickly to accommodate the project, according to this 2011 presentation by the Los Alamos utility company. The Japanese companies also want to sell their technologies in the U.S. and take an active role in setting international technical standards for smart grid. The Los Alamos lab will help with data collection, management and modeling.

The consortium conceived of the project a few years back and signed an agreement to carry it out in 2010. While the goal back then included an intent to tackle the U.S. market, the results from the project could serve Japan as well, particularly since the country has been keen on boosting renewable energy generation ever since its Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in March 2011. Kyocera, for example, earlier this year announced a plan to sell solar energy systems with batteries to homeowners in Japan.

Adding more renewable energy into the grid presents technical and operational challenges for utilities and grid operators. Solar and wind power, for example, can only be generated at certain hours of the day and night, and weather conditions have a big impact on their production rates. Since an electric grid works best when there is a balance of supply and demand, grid operators have to figure out how to make up for any short fall or surge of renewable energy that could happen at any time. Power plants that use coal, natural gas and nuclear, on the other hand, can produce a steady stream of power.

Many other utilities and tech companies are carrying out similar demonstration projects in the U.S. in order to meet their state mandates to increasing the use of renewable energy.

One of the two projects underway within Los Alamos utility’s territory creates a micro-grid using a 1 MW solar energy system and a 1.8 MW/8.3 Mwh battery system. The solar energy will course through a particular distribution line to test its impact on the grid.

The second project will put solar panels on a home, which has been built especially for the project (check out the Los Alamos Daily Post’s report), and pairs the solar system by Kyocera with a 24 kWh lithium-ion battery system, a heat pump storage unit, and sensors and communication equipment. The idea is to figure out how to operate all this equipment to meet the energy demand of the home and respond to any requests from the utility or grid operator to use the solar electricity for balancing the grid.

Photo courtesy of Kyocera

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

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• A near-term outlook for big data
• Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution

Perhaps more interesting is Samsung’s “one phone for all” approach. Instead of multiple Galaxy S III models with slight carrier tweaks, Samsung has taking an Apple-like approach and created one singular design for the phone.

That means, for example, that the U.S. models will have the same hardware button on the front as the international versions. The only differences for the U.S. are the chip that powers the phone and the amount of memory. Since Samsung’s quad-core Exynos processor doesn’t yet have LTE integration, the company is using Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 for all U.S. Galaxy S III handsets and boosting the RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB. I haven’t yet used a U.S. version of the Galaxy S III, but I expect this combo to be similar in performance to the international version.

Samsung has been in Apple’s sights in the courts lately — Cupertino is already trying to stop the Galaxy S III from being sold in the U.S. — but the bigger target seems to be HTC and its Android phones. Last month, Apple’s legal efforts were enough to hold up shipments of various HTC One models in the U.S., which forced HTC to make a change to its software. That change was enough to get shipments flowing again, but this week, Apple said that’s still not enough to solve the problem. This entire situation is worth watching because the alleged patent infringement — as I read it, that is — could apply to any Android hardware maker. In some sense, Apple is indirectly fighting with Google by aiming at the smaller targets: The handset makers themselves.

Just as the week came to a close, I received a review unit of Toshiba’s Excite 7.7 tablet; one of the few that ships with Android 4.0. The device is a Wi-Fi-only model, which may disappoint some, but the positive is that there’s no monthly bill for mobile broadband. The Excite 7.7 is physically very similar to the Galaxy Tab 7.7 I purchased earlier this year and has the same 1280 x 800 resolution using what Toshiba calls a “Pixel Pure AMOLED Display”. I see little difference between the two screens.

Where I can see variance is in the overall experience and performance. Toshiba opted for Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip, which keeps apps, games and video moving quickly. Plus, I find the tablet experience to be improved with Android 4.0; my Galaxy Tab 7.7 is still stuck on Android 3.2. Toshiba didn’t hide Android with a skin either; it’s generally a pure experience; the only exception being some apps grouped in folders on the home screen. I’ll have a full review soon, but the key data point that stands out is the price: $499 which may be too much for a small slate. Here’s my first look so you can start to decide for yourself on the value.

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

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016
• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry

I’ll follow up with a full review, but here’s first look and some initial impressions of the device. I definitely like Android 4.0 on a tablet much better than the prior version — which is what my Galaxy Tab still runs on. The slate is light and thin, making it very portable. The Wi-Fi-only connection is my preference as there’s no monthly contract.

But on the potential downside are a proprietary charging cable and the relatively high price of $499. As I mention in the video look, at that price Toshiba’s small slate is competing with larger devices that offer a greater range of functionality and potential. The Asus Transformer Prime — also with a Tegra 3 chip — is one that comes to mind, as does Apple’s iPad.

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

• Is Android broken and if so, will Google fix it?
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Analyzing the wearable computing market