As solar thermal firms like eSolar have started flipping switches on their first projects in U.S. deserts, I’ve been eagerly waiting the stirling engine solar folks to officially enter the game. Looks like we’re getting one project at the end of this month: Stirling Energy Systems and its developer partner Tessera Solar are planning an invite-only kick-off event for the media on Jan. 22 to inaugurate the first project to use Stirling Energy System’s “SunCatcher” solar dish.

Stirling Energy and Tessera have built Maricopa Solar, a 1.5MW solar project in Peoria, Ariz. (Maricopa County) that will use 60 SunCatchers to sell clean power to local Arizona utility Salt River Project. The ribbon-cutting event is supposed to feature Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Department of Energy Solar Program Manager John Lushetsky.

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While we’d love to think it’s our smart analysis of greentech businesses, our savvy scoops and our winning personalities that drive your clicks, here’s a clue into what you like reading. . . . lists! So here’s our obligatory end-of-the-year top 10 list of the most popular posts on 2009 — and yes, it is dominated by all those lists: smart grid, home energy management tools, solar thermal, algae fuel, cellulosic ethanol.

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Renewable energy has for years been hailed as the predominant solution to California’s energy dilemma, a sentiment that more recently has been supported by public policy as well. But while there’s no question that sustainable energy is exciting, if Spain’s experience is any example, misplaced government mandates, aggressive special interests and taxpayer-funded subsidies for the clean power industry would cost us dearly.

Spain is often held up as the role model for renewable energy development. The Spanish government has been generous with subsidies for clean power in the form of grants and direct low-interest loans — $1.6 billion for the solar industry alone in 2008. The result has been that it’s basically subsidized companies’ losses and the true costs of renewable energy development has not been passed on to the consumer. Now the Spanish government is warning that its clean power policies could result in significant end user cost increases for electricity — for many years to come.

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Raising hundreds of millions of dollars, engineering just the right design and brokering decade-long deals for cutting edge technology with cautious utilities, sound like pretty big hurdles to building massive solar power plants in the deserts. But it can actually be the boring stuff — permitting and siting of solar plants and transmission lines — that are causing significant roadblocks to getting these plants built. That’s why John Woolard, CEO of solar thermal startup BrightSource, called upon policy leaders at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on Monday to roll-up-their-sleeves and help speed the administrative processing along.

The parts of the solar projects that took a lot of innovation and required a great deal of funds are actually going quite well for BrightSource. The company raised over $115 million ($160 million total) from a long list of investors including Google.org, BP Alternative Energy, StatoilHydro Venture, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Chevron Technology Ventures. And the company has closed deals in the gigawatt range with two of California’s largest utilities: Southern California Edison and PG&E

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If the rest of the country had followed California’s lead in supporting clean energy, improving efficiency, and creating green jobs, it might not be in the economic doldrums it’s in today. That’s the assertion made by venture capitalist F. Noel Perry, founder of the nonprofit policy group Next 10, which has just released a new report on how energy efficiency and clean technology has provided stimulus for California’s economy. “If California had not moved as forcefully to decrease energy consumption over the last three decades, we would be in a much more precarious economic position right now,” he said in an announcement today. “Imagine where the country could be if it were as efficient as California.”

Lest our imaginations run wild, let’s look at the hard facts. As we’ve noted before, clean technology investment hit a record $3.3 billion last year. According to the Next 10 report, the California Green Innovation Index, California registered more patents for clean technologies than any other state from 2002 to 2007. Grid-connected solar capacity grew by 41 percent from 2006 to 2007, contributing to a green jobs-creation rate that’s increasing 10 times faster than total job growth. (Data from 2008, when more than 10 solar thermal companies geared up for major projects in the Mojave Desert, might show even more growth.)

Another factor in the creation of 1.5 million jobs: California residents and companies with lower energy bills had cash to spend on other things.

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Like most sectors, the coming crop of quarterly earnings reports from solar companies will be watched closely. There are arguments for and against the health of solar power in the imminent recession.

On the one hand, companies needing capital may be stretched, silicon may be expensive and prices for solar panels may fall. On the other hand, solar power may be a beneficiary of state and federal fiscal stimulus plans.

In that respect it was very encouraging to solar bulls that SunPower’s third quarter numbers, released Thursday, were strong. The $377.5 million revenue in the quarter was above analysts estimates of $350.4 million, and the 60 cents a share net profit was above the estimated 56 cents.

And while the company’s guidance for the current quarter is in line with the Street’s estimates, SunPower sees 2009 being a moderately strong year. It forecasts its revenue next year to be between $2.05 billion and $2.15 billion (versus the Street’s $2.06 billion) and earnings of at least $3.50 a share (versus the consensus $3.67 a share).

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SkyFuel officially launched its low cost trough-shaped solar concentrators, dubbed SkyTrough, at an event in Colorado today. Parabolic troughs are an older solar technology, and while most are made out of glass, SkyFuel’s are made from the company’s own ReflecTech film material — sort of like mylar but sturdier — which it says can deliver the “world’s highest performance, lowest cost utility-scale solar power system.” The trough system, which we wrote about earlier this month, concentrates sun light onto a liquid-filled tube, which heats up and powers a steam turbine to produce electricity.

Claiming the world’s best performing, lowest-cost utility solar system is a bold statement, especially considering there’s so many competing solar thermal companies out there right now (see our list 11 Solar Thermal Companies Powering Up). In fact SkyFuel is making a lot of strong statements, trying to make a splash; they have been much quieter than many of their competitors up to this point. SkyFuel also says that its system “features the largest parabolic trough modules ever built,” at 375 feet long and 20 feet tall, and the company’s aluminum frame makes the system “30 percent lighter per unit of mirror area than even the best of the previous utility-scale parabolic collectors.”

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Solar power isn’t all about the panel. Inverters, the electronic devices that regulate the flow of power from solar panels to the electrical grid, are also gaining interest from investors. Among them is Apollo Solar, a Bethel, Conn.-based manufacturer of electronics for renewable energy devices, which said today it has raised $4.5 million in a private offering.

The funding will be used to expand manufacturing and marketing for its inverters, charge controllers and display devices for solar arrays. Apollo didn’t disclose which investors participated in the offering, but we’ve got a call in to the company and will update when we find out more.

Distributed solar energy could be a significant energy resource as new power-generating technologies hit the market and prices drop. But connecting those resources to the grid in a way that helps utilities make use of them requires better, smarter components. That means inverters and the other electronic components that tie solar panels into our electrical wires and networks are gaining importance and investor interest.

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We were pretty sure that the news that solar thermal startup Ausra had raised $25 million back in August, wasn’t the full story — Ausra Executive VP Robert Morgan had said that the company was looking to raise a round closer to $50 million for its Series C. Well, this afternoon Ausra says that it has closed a round of $60.6 million. The round includes Al Gore’s investment fund Generation Investment Management, as well as KERN Partners, Starfish Ventures and founding investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures.

The company says the funds will partly go towards completing its first solar power plant in the U.S., a 5 MW project called Kimberlina near Bakersfield, Calif., which will use Ausra’s linear Fresnel concentrator technology. The company is also working on a 177 MW solar project for PG&E in central California.

Ausra is just one of more than a dozen companies building solar plants in the deserts that use the sun’s heat to generate power; the plantsuse mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight to heat tubes of liquid and power steam turbines. Startup SkyFuel is also working on Linear Fresnel technology, but plans to use heated molten salt, while Ausra says it plans to work with heated water.

Ausra, the startup that’s building massive solar thermal plants in the desert and has already raised tens of millions of dollars from Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, is still adding to its war chest. According to a regulatory filing picked up by Pehub.com, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has raised $25.4 million in Series C funding. And that’s probably just the first half of the round, given that Executive VP Robert Morgan said at the Intersolar conference last month that the company was looking to raise closer to $50 million for its Series C.

In fact a report from CNET had pegged the round at closer to the $100-$150 million range. Perhaps the company has dialed back on its funding plans in the face of an uncertain investment tax credit? The CNET report also said that the company would need two project financings next year and that it planned to go public by 2010.

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