Tools and services for improving a home’s energy efficiency — things like Energy Star appliances, home energy audits and green roofing materials — often lack the glitz and gadget-appeal of solar panels and other highly visible signs that a homeowner has “gone green.” But according to a new report out today from Pike Research, energy efficiency retrofits, products and services for the residential building market are poised to see a wave of growth as the U.S. pulls out of recession over the next five years.

In particular, Pike forecasts that the home energy auditing market will nearly triple to $23 billion by 2014, up from $8.1 billion last year. The market for efficiency improvements along the lines of roofing and window replacements and upgrades for HVAC systems and appliances will increase to $50.2 billion by 2014, up from $38.3 billion in 2009, the firm predicts. And Energy Star refrigerators and clothes washers could generate revenues of $21.9 billion to $33.2 billion between 2009 and 2014.

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One of the most commonly cited problems about solar power is that it’s intermittent, meaning that it’s not always sunny when electricity is needed. That means customers can’t count on being able to generate exactly as much solar power as they need to meet electricity demand at any given time, and utilities must rely on conventional power plants to ensure that electricity is always available.

Screen-printed solar-cell manufacturer Suniva and battery maker GS Battery are teaming up to help solve that problem by pairing solar projects with batteries. It’s a common pairing for off-grid systems, which need batteries to have electricity at night, for example, or on cloudy days. But the companies also want to add batteries to systems that are connected to the grid.

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Siemens, the German energy and engineering giant, has been slower to move into the smart grid than fellow competitors like GE and Swiss-based ABB. But over the past year Siemens has seemed to be making up for lost time, announcing a flurry of new projects and partnerships, and saying that it wants to double its current growth rate in the smart grid sector to capture €6 billion ($8.48 billion) in global business over the next five years, compared to its current €1 billion ($1.41 billion) in estimated smart grid related revenues in the fiscal year ending Sept. 2009.

So how exactly does Siemens plan to generate all that money? Well, as with fellow giant energy conglomerate General Electric, it’s sometimes easier to point to what Siemens is not doing than what it is doing in industries where it has a broad and sprawling interest. Here are our takeaways for what Siemens is, and isn’t, doing for the smart grid.

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For a while there, it looked like 2010 might be the first banner year for solar stocks since 2007. It still could be, although this week is showing that, if solar does make a comeback this year, it’s not going to happen with out some sudden and stomach-churning setbacks.

The first week or so of a calendar year can be an interesting — if not always accurate — gauge of how investors are feeling about a sector of stocks. Some of the bigger names in solar energy saw a healthy gain in their share prices amid strong volume, signaling a renewed confidence among investors. As of the end of trading Monday, Solarfun was up 36 percent, while Yingli Green Energy and JA Solar were both up 18 percent. Overall, the Claymore/MAC Solar Energy Index was up 11 percent after the first six days of trading, compared with a 1 percent gain in the Nasdaq.

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Over the past nine years, solar plastic maker Konarka has been creeping toward commercialization, raising close to $200 million in private equity and government grants. When will it teeter over that brink of pilot production and move into full-scale commercialization? Well, for now some more funding: According to SEC documents, this week Konarka raised yet another round of $23.8 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Good Energies and 3i.

By my rough calculations, the company has raised close to $175 million in private equity and $20 million in government grants. That puts it close to the $200 million mark, which only a few greentech companies have achieved, including smart grid network maker Silver Spring Networks and thin film solar firm Solyndra.

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Boeing is hardly a high-profile name in the world of solar thermal power development — firms like BrightSource Energy or Abengoa spring to mind a lot quicker. But Boeing, as it turns out, is the lord of solar thermal technology patents, according to a cleantech law firm.

A patent tracker by Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti shows that Boeing has snagged 14 solar thermal patents in the U.S. since 2002, more than any other company. The technologies covered include the use of molten salt to store energy and the heating of fluids to produce steam for running a generator, according to the Albany, N.Y., law firm’s latest Clean Energy Patent Growth Index (CEPGI).

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Morgan Solar, a Toronto-based startup developing acrylic solar concentrators, told us today it has raised $8.2 million in its first round of venture-capital funding from Spanish utility Iberdrola, plastics manufacturer Nypro, and Turnstone Capital Management, which led the round. Back in October, when Morgan Solar announced it had closed $4.7 million in the first phase of the round, it said it was aiming for a round of “up to $8.5 million.”

The news could bode well for the sector this year after the Cleantech Group announced earlier today that solar investments fell a whopping 64 percent in 2009 from the previous year, with fourth-quarter deals reaching a new 3-year low. Dallas Kachan, a managing director at the Cleantech Group, said the most chilling factor has been an oversupply of solar panels compared with demand, and added that solar’s capital intensity may have led investors to pull back and wait for better market conditions.

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Americans love the idea of the neatly packaged product, even when it comes to clean power — biofuels, wind and nuclear all come in modular “in-a-box” sizes. In that same vein, Helios Solar, a 2-year-old startup based in Denver, Colorado, has announced that its SunCube is now on-sale, and will be ready for installation in the Spring of 2010.

The SunCube is a concentrating photovoltaic system — which magnifies sunlight and directs it onto solar cells — and is set up as a 300-watt module, with 30+ percent efficiency, which is almost double the efficiency of standard PV. The Cube also uses a dual-axis tracking system to maximize the power output.

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Silver Lining of COP15: The merely “politically binding” accord that resulted from the UN talks in Copenhagen this month “is not the disaster that it at first appears.” It marks “some progress towards closing” the split between developed and developing countries in the UN’s climate negotiation process. — The Economist

Will Cali’s Central Valley Go Nuclear?: If a push by the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group and Areva to build nuclear reactors in California’s Central Valley is successful, “it will set a strong precedent for nuclear energy in the U.S. in general, carrying the potential to dramatically change the country’s power mix.” — VentureBeat’s GreenBeat

Hoku to Resume Construction After Tianwei Deal: “Financially strapped polysilicon start-up Hoku Scientific and Tianwei New Energy Holdings have closed the deal giving Tianwei a majority investment in Hoku.” Construction on Hoku’s Pocatello polysilicon plant is slated to resume as a result. – PV-tech.org

Massachusetts Extends Solar Rebates: State officials yesterday unveiled a successor to the popular $68 million Commonwealth Solar rebate program that made solar energy panels more affordable for Massachusetts homeowners and businesses. — The Boston Globe

French Carbon Tax Struck Down: “France’s Constitutional Council, the nation’s highest constitutional authority, struck down a new tax on carbon emissions, dealing a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made fighting climate change a key part of his tenure.” — Dow Jones Newswires

Wow, I had no idea solar theft was such a problem. According to a KQED Public Radio, over the past year over 400 solar panels, worth $1,000 each, have been stolen from vineyards throughout Napa County, California. That’s pretty amazing given solar photovoltaics don’t even have that high of a penetration rate yet.

That statistic also suggests that the problem may only get worse as more and more organizations, companies and people install solar panels on roofs, at schools and next to vineyards. It sounds like the ground-mounted systems were the big target in the Napa County thefts, so I wouldn’t start worrying about your bolted-down rooftop panels just yet. But for all you entrepreneurs out there, solar security maybe be a hot topic of 2010.

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