A startup out of MIT called 1366 Technologies, which is developing new ways to manufacture and design silicon-based solar cells, has moved out of the lab and into a pilot facility and plans to show off next week its work on a solar cell architecture that measures 6 inches by 6 inches. 1366 Tech CEO Frank van Mierlo tells us that the architecture “is the last proving point before commercial production.” And to move into commercial manufacturing van Mierlo tells us that the company plans to raise a round of $50 million in funding later this year.

1366 Tech was founded in 2007 by van Mierlo and MIT Professor Emanuel Sachs. Sachs is well-known for developing the string ribbon solar manufacturing technology, which has brought down the cost and raised the efficiency of solar panel production and has been the key to Evergreen Solar’s success. In March, 1366 Tech started talking about its technology and announced that it had raised $12.4 million in funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners.

The company’s innovation is a new solar cell architecture with a silicon crystal surface that keeps light bouncing around inside the cell until it’s absorbed. “We do a better job of capturing and and trapping light and converting it to electricity,” van Mierlo explained. That can lead to solar cells with a 19 percent efficiency rate and a manufacturing cost some 25 percent lower than traditional multi-crystalline solar cells. Many solar companies have been turning to alternative non-silicon materials to create cells, as there’s been a shortage of silicon over the past couple of years and the price of silicon has been high. 1366 Tech has been working on new ways to use standard silicon, which could end up being a smart bet as the silicon supply shortage looks to be easing up over the next few months, and the price of silicon will likely be coming down soon.

Bob Metcalfe, the father of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, has been mining the “rich vein” of Internet history to inform the next generation of energy technology — or “enertech” (energy technology), as he likes to call it. In an article in Scientific American this month, Metcalfe, who now heads up energy investments for Polaris Venture Partners, outlines these four lessons for keeping energy innovation on track:

1) Don’t stick to hard-and-fast categories: The divide between telecommunications and computing — voice and data — has blurred as communications networks have merged to provide both. It’s a blurring, Metcalfe says, that should be kept in mind when it comes to energy definitions like “feed,” “food” and “fuel” — just look at corn ethanol.

2) Obey the laws: Metcalfe created Metcalfe’s Law, which calculates the value of the network effect on computing; the future of clean power generation will be distributed and networked as well, he says. The development of the Internet also revealed that users’ desire for bandwidth is insatiable and building the Internet was not about conserving bandwidth, he says. Likewise consumers will have an unending desire for energy and the energy crisis will not be solved through conservation.

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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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Credit Crunch Crunching Wind: Solar projects aren’t the only renewable energy plans that could be effected by the credit crunch, wind could get the squeeze, too — via Dow Jones Clean Tech Insight reports and WSJ.

Cleantech In Canada, Eh?: They might be underappreciated and underfunded, says Tyler Hamilton, but our neighbors up North have their own boom going on — Clean Break.

Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Brings Lots O Risk: Niche industries will be built up to support electric vehicles and the companies building the charging stations and infrastructure will “need to assume risk that automakers and utilities aren’t willing to take,” says the Matter Network, which is exclusively covering the Rocky Mountain Institute’s electric vehicle symposium — Matter Network.

Energy Efficiency Scorecard: Based on utilities energy efficiency programs, transportation, building codes and energy efficiency incentives the states all got ranked. California, Oregon, and Connecticut win, while North Dakota, Alabama and Wyoming are at the bottom — ACEEE.

Ausra has been one of the most high-profile solar startups to get backing from Silicon Valley, but being funded by cleantech heavyweights Khosla, Kleiner and most recently Al Gore’s investment group doesn’t necessarily shield it from the uncertainty of the financial markets. Like many of its cleantech peers, the company has to consider what it will do if the financial markets don’t calm down over the next year.

If all goes well in the financial markets next year, Ausra’s executive VP and chief commercial officer, Glen Davis, says the company will raise project financing to build a solar plant that could cost between $600 million and $800 million; California utility PG&E has committed to buy the solar power from that plant in a power purchase agreement. Ausra could theoretically start construction on that plant in the second half of next year and have it initially producing power 12 to 15 months later — if everything falls into place. While the current financial downturn won’t necessarily effect the timeline of the project that will sell power to PG&E, raising financing and keeping on schedule could prove difficult depending on the markets, Davis says.

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This afternoon, California Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to officially dedicate the 2 MW solar system that covers carports down at Applied Material’s Sunnyvale, Calif., office. The solar system was completed in late September and at the time was touted as “the largest solar power deployment at a corporate facility in the United States.” Schwarzenegger is also using the opportunity to give a keynote address to an investor forum showing investors and companies how they can partner with California to boost cleantech in the state.

California is already leading the cleantech boom in the United States. According to the Cleantech Group, California-based startups brought in a record $1.1 billion in 35 investments in the third quarter of this year, which was 42 percent of U.S cleantech investments and was more than the total investments in Europe, China and India combined. At the same time Silicon Valley is quickly turning into Solar Valley, with startups like Nanosolar and SoloPower building plants in San Jose and venture capitalists investing massive funds into Bay Area companies like Solyndra and Miasole.

Applied Materials isn’t a startup, of course, but the chip equipment maker has been betting on the gear that makes solar in a big way. President and CEO Mike Splinter, who will also be speaking at the event this afternoon, announced the company’s move into PV manufacturing equipment back in late 2006. Since then the company has been buying up smaller solar hardware makers (spending around $1 billion on acquisitions) and some analysts predict that the company’s solar revenue could reach $1.2 billion next year.

A technology developed at Ohio University to grow algae in efficient bioreactors has been licensed by Atlanta-based startup Green Bios Technology, the university said this morning. The developer of the algae bioreactor, Ohio University Professor of Mechanical Engineering David Bayless, told us that the reactor and light transmission design can increase algae growth by 20 to 50 percent compared to more traditional bioreactors. Bayless, who has been working on the technology for a good 11 years, told us this morning that it’s been a long road and he felt like a proud parent now that the tech was going to reach the market.

Bioreactors are closed environments that house the elements that stimulate algae to grow, including water, CO₂ and sun light. Some companies grow their algae in open ponds, which is cheaper, but bioreactors enable algae-growers to closely control the process. In his lab Bayless has been able to deliver increases in productivity by tweaking the light management, fluid transport and reactor architecture.

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LS9, a startup using synthetic biology to produce a renewable petroleum product, says it has secured Bill Haywood as its CEO to lead the company’s transition from research and development into production. The three-year-old company has been led by President Bob Walsh, who joined in July 2007, and before that Doug Cameron had the role of acting CEO, who at the time was also the Chief Scientific Officer at Khosla Ventures (though has since joined Piper Jaffray as Chief Science Advisor. LS9 is based in South San Francisco (update: recently moved from San Carlos, Calif.), and has raised at least $20 million from Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Update: We had a long chat with Haywood, who says the company is planning on creating a demonstration facility in the later half of 2010 that will be able to produce 2.5 million gallons of biofuel per year. LS9 will also be looking to raise a funding round of $75 million to $100 million in the first or second quarter of 2009.

LS9 is one of several biofuel startups using synthetic biology and genetics to develop biofuels that are more energy-dense than current first generation biofuels, require less energy to produce and can be distributed through the existing petroleum infrastructure. LS9 makes microbes that can convert fatty acids into hydrocarbon-based biocrudes and industrial chemicals. Other startups with similar aims include Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics and Amyris Biotechnologies.

We haven’t heard much from LS9 over the past year, and likely it was heads-down proving the technology worked. Now that Haywood has joined, the company says it will be shifting into commercial production. Haywood was previously senior VP of refining for Tesoro Petroleum, and he has more than 30 years of experience in the fuels manufacturing business.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it could someday help you manage your daily energy consumption, too. At a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that as part of its recently announced collaboration with GE, the search engine giant is currently looking at designing tools to help consumers understand their energy consumption. Google has also been actively looking at utilities’ smart meter projects, he said, and at using its strong connection with consumers to play a role in consumer energy management.

In fact, out of all of Google’s grand energy schemes, among them its $4.4 trillion energy proposal, its $45 million investment into energy-related startups and its plug-in vehicle project, energy data management could be one of the only places where Google plans to generate revenues. Schmidt said during his speech that there is an internal debate going on at the company as to how much of its energy initiatives will turn into real revenues, but that, “[T]o the degree that we can be in the information businesses or communications businesses about energy and its impact on the world, we are clearly going to be there.”

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Energy emerged as a major topic of discussion in the second presidential debate on Tuesday night, and while Obama and McCain disagreed on the details of their energy plans, both candidates largely agreed that clean technology is necessary to both help fix the economy and fight climate change.

When the moderator Tom Brokaw asked what the fastest and most positive way to bail people out of economic ruin was, McCain’s first response was:

“I have a plan to fix this problem and it has got to do with energy independence. We’ve got to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t want us very — like us very much.”

Later on in the debate, McCain emphasized that energy independence, specifically “drilling offshore and nuclear power,” are fundamental ways to get the economy moving again.

When Brokaw asked the candidates to rate in order their priorities of health care, energy, and entitlement reform, Obama put energy at the top:

“Energy we have to deal with today, because you’re paying $3.80 here in Nashville for gasoline, and it could go up. And it’s a strain on your family budget, but it’s also bad for our national security, because countries like Russia and Venezuela and, you know, in some cases, countries like Iran, are benefiting from higher oil prices. So we’ve got to deal with that right away.”

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