As utilities start to build large solar projects and solar power makes up an increasingly larger portion of the electricity mix, integrating this energy into the grid will be a challenge. Solar, like wind, is intermittent — power from the sun fluctuates when clouds pass overhead and wind doesn’t blow consistently. Now General Electric, which has been a major player in helping to integrate wind into the world’s power grids, wants to do the same for solar.

The company has turned a 1.5 MW wind converter into a new, 600 kW solar inverter for utility projects, Rick Robertson, an inverter program manager at GE, told us at this week’s Solar Power International. The inverter, pictured above, is targeted at multimegawatt solar projects with multiple installations on a single site, he said. GE is now taking orders for the inverter, which was introduced at the conference, and plans to ship its first units by the end of this year, he added.

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The wireless standard WiMAX might not be the sexiest of topics, but maybe the smart grid can lend it some buzz. This morning Grid Net, a startup that has developed smart grid software based on WiMAX, is officially launching itself, unveiling its software product and announcing Australian utility customer SP AusNet, as well as a whole host of partners including GE, Motorola, Cisco, Intel, and WiMAX service provider Clearwire.

While Grid Net is already three years old (when we’ve profiled them they were in so-called stealth mode) this is the first time that Grid Net is talking publicly about a paying utility customer and discussing its reseller program, through which it will work with third party sellers like GE to sell its software to utilities. GE is the first company to resell Grid Net’s smart meter software, bundled with GE’s own WiMAX-based smart meters, that have an Intel chip inside.

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GE is upping its stake in technologies designed to make and use electricity more efficiently. The company’s investment arm, GE Energy Financial Services, today announced it has invested in three startups: SolarEdge, which has developed electronics to monitor solar panels and maximize their production, Tendril, which has developed energy-management technology for utilities and consumers, and Grid Net, a smart-meter software company.

The investment in Boulder, Colo.-based Tendril comes on top of a $30 million round that the 5-year-old company announced back in June. GE and Tendril said in July they would partner to develop software that would connect GE’s smart appliances to the grid, sending energy information between the appliances and the utility. This latest investment expands the partnership, according to the release, which didn’t disclose the size of the deal.

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Some 60,000 solar insiders from around the world have gathered in Munich this week for the annual Intersolar conference. As prices for solar panels fall and solar developers face financing challenges in the economic downturn, Markus Elsässer, CEO of Solar Promotion, one of the two organizers of Intersolar 2009, positioned this as a year of innovation for the solar industry: “We have seen countless new and highly innovative products and systems in the run-up to the show,” he said in a release.

Here’s a roundup of some news items from the show so far:

• Masdar PV, a wholly owned solar subsidiary of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi cleantech initiative, unveiled its thin-film solar panels at Intersolar this week. The company claims the panels, which include a double layer of amorphous silicon, are 10 percent more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than regular single-layer amorphous-silicon panels. Masdar PV plans to use a SunFab manufacturing line from Applied Materials, which is currently being installed near Erfurt, Germany, to mass-produce the panels.

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When we first wrote about Herzliya, Israel-based SolarEdge late last year, we knew the company was gunning to tackle what’s called partial shading — a problem whereby shade, dirt or shadow on just a few cells of a solar panel can disproportionately reduce energy output. Like National Semiconductor, SolarEdge had laid out a scheme for using electronics to monitor individual solar panel cells and boost efficiency. The idea is to allow unshaded cells to harvest energy at full throttle regardless of whether neighbors are compromised by shadow or other factors.

Today SolarEdge announced that BP Solar plans to develop modules embedded with its electronics, and it just started showing off its system for the first time at the Intersolar conference in Munich. So the 3-year-old startup is pulling back the curtain a bit more on its technology, strategy and challenges.

In a conversation with SolarEdge founder, Chairman and CEO Guy Sella last week, he emphasized that the company — which remains relatively small with only about 60 employees — started to develop its system shortly before National Semiconductor came into the space with its SolarMagic devices. Asked why SolarEdge has remained somewhat tight-lipped when it has as many as a dozen installations worldwide, Sella said the company wanted to secure a first-mover’s advantage when it got started in 2006. He thinks SolarEdge has enough of a lead — in terms of gathering performance data from installations, forming partnerships, building relationships with integrators and advancing its technology — to beat out competitors at this point, but “From this point on, they are starting to close the gap.”

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The massive solar conference in Munich Germany kicks off tomorrow, and we’ll be bringing you some of the news about the startups and tech innovations from the show. Tigo Energy, a startup that sells software and hardware to make solar photovoltaic systems more efficient (not to be confused with solar financier Tioga), has announced that it has raised $10 million in a second round of funding from ICV, Matrix Partners, OVP and Clal Energy.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company’s system embeds its nodes into each photovoltaic module. The idea is if a cloud or shade passes over the panels, traditional systems are at the mercy of the weakest module. But a Tigo-enabled system can maintain the maximum power output of the system more effectively, and account for the weak link.

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Intellectual property rights have a long history as a cornerstone of Silicon Valley lobbying efforts. Welcome to the latest chapter: defending IP rights against the potentially eroding force of international climate deals. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spearheading a new effort to ensure that U.S. lawmakers and climate negotiators don’t — in their efforts to make clean technologies available to developing countries — weaken rules about who can profit from those innovations.

The Chamber of Commerce rounded up something of a motley crew for the launch of its new Innovation, Development & Employment Alliance, or IDEA: representatives from Microsoft, General Electric, startup Sunrise Solar and auto supplier Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems joined the Chamber’s Global Intellectual Property Center President, David Hirschman, in announcing the new group in Washington, D.C. earlier this week.

Right now, IDEA is mainly worried about the UN climate negotiations coming up in Copenhagen in December. In a recent interview with the Green Patent Blog, Caroline Joiner, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, said the upcoming talks represent “the IP battle of the year.”

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Herzliya, Israel-based startup SolarEdge gave its first press interview earlier this month and closed on a $23 million Series B round of financing. So why has the company — which has raised a total of $34.8 million in venture capital from Vertex Venture Capital and Genesis Partners of Israel and the U.S. firms Walden International and Opus Capital — been hiding behind a stealthy cloak these last two years?

SolarEdge says its technology can boost solar panel efficiency by 15-20 percent using semiconductors and software. The company’s approach, similar to that of National Semiconductor and Tigo Energy, involves monitoring individual solar panels with embedded integrated circuits. The idea is to sidestep the problem of partial shading, which can keep typical inverters from harvesting enough voltage to feed usable electricity (alternating current) into a connected power grid.

The Wall Street Journal gets into the nitty-gritty of inverters here. But the main point, as National CEO Brian Halla explained earlier this month at Actel’s EcoChip forum (the company’s SolarMagic device also tackles partial shading), is that shade, dirt or shadow on just a few cells of a solar panel can disproportionately reduce energy output. According to California’s public utility and energy commissions, the solar cell with the least light typically determines the operating current for all cells wired in that series — more so for crystalline modules, and less for thin film. Using semiconductors and software, SolarEdge would allow unshaded cells to harvest energy at full throttle despite sullied neighbors.

Israel’s growing solar industry, early moves on electric vehicles (the home to Shai Agassi’s first electric vehicle infrastructure project) and recently funded water startups is making the state one of the front-runners of the cleantech revolution. And Israel keeps churning out new solar startups; on Monday a solar photovoltaic company called Pythagoras Solar said it had raised a Series A round of $10 million.

The release says that Pythagoras will use the funds, raised from Israel Cleantech Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital and Evergreen Venture Partners, for R&D and to bring its technology to market. The company’s web site has very few details about what makes Pythagoras’ technology any kind of breakthrough, only that it uses “innovative geometry to revolutionize the cost of solar,” and is working on “software models, optic design, semiconductor processes, materials science, and mass manufacturing techniques” to accomplish that task. The company’s website says they’ll release more details in 2009, but we’ll update the post if we get more solid answers from them.

Israel has been home to quite a few recently emerged solar startups, including next generation solar materials company Xjet Solar and solar power conversion startup SolarEdge Technologies (update: Israel Cleantech Ventures didn’t invest in those, see below). At the same time Israel has been aggressive about implementing its own solar laws. Avi Brenmiller, president of solar thermal company Solel, which also hails from Israel, told us that Israeli law has pushing the domestic solar industry forward with legislation like enforcing solar-powered water heaters on rooftops.

Over A Billion and Counting: Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne rehash some cleantech investing data that they put out in September: that global venture capital investments in clean technology companies grew to just over $1 billion in the first six months of 2007 – release.

$600M Carbon Credit Fund: According to a report from Business Intelligence Middle East, cited by Climateer Investing, Istithmar, a unit of investment group Dubai World, and Sindicatum Carbon Capital Holdings will raise $600 million to invest in projects that produce carbon-emission credits in Asian countries like India, Indonesia and China. — Climateer Investing.

Battery Maker Brings in $25M: International Battery has raised $25 million from investment firm Digital Power Capital. The company, which makes lithium ion batteries, will use the funds to build out a manufacturing facility in Allentown, Penn. — PeHub.com.

Sunny Funding: According to Venture Wire, Israeli solar startup SolarEdge has raised a Series A round of $11.8 million via Opus Capital, Genesis Partners, Walden International Ventures, and ORR Partners, for its technology to increase the efficiency of solar power components.

Recycle This!: Proactive Ink Recycling has raised an undisclosed round from private equity firm KCA Partners — PeHub.com.