Solar stocks continue to have a rough time. In stark contrast to 2007, when the bigger names in the sector were rallying month after month on the promise of solar power, there is no clear sign of where the bottom is.

Just when it looks like old concerns have been priced into solar shares, a new glitch emerges to push them even lower. Positive earnings surprises or expectations of falling polysilicon prices will lift stocks for a bit, only to have new problems - cheaper oil curtailing demand for solar energy and tightened credit - drag them back down.

Take Suntech Power (STP), which started 2008 at $82 a share and then fell to $11.95 in late October, before bouncing back above $20 last week. But it soon tumbled back to $12 a share on a warning of a new threat - an unexpectedly resurgent dollar. Rival SunPower (SPWRA) said the strong dollar would hurt its earnings next year. The news pulled down the whole sector, including Suntech, which relies on a weak European market for sales.

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In order to meet the Renewable Portfolio Standards of states, utilities will need to add an aggregate of nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030. And to get all that power to customers, a total investment of as much as $2 trillion into transmission and distribution networks will be required, according to a report released today by energy consultancy The Brattle Group.

To maintain grid reliability with so much new, intermittent and far-flung renewable energy generation, our national electricity grid needs a serious upgrade. In fact, the Brattle report estimates that more money might have to be invested in the grid than in actual renewable energy generation.

Another report released today by the energy regulatory group North American Electric Reliability (NERC), identified the lack of investment in transmission infrastructure as a major obstacle for green energy deployment. “Inadequate attention to the transmission grid will undermine all efforts to address climate change while endangering our electric reliability, and thereby our national security,” Michael Heyeck, senior V-P of transmission at utility American Electric Power, says in the report.

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SunPower, whose shares took a hit last week after it cut its fourth-quarter outlook, said today it’s inked a 4-year deal to supply its solar panels to Italy’s Ecoware. Under the contract, SunPower will ship at least 130 megawatts of its high-efficiency solar panels to Ecoware, a solar power plant integrator, starting in the first quarter of 2009. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

But the good news may not be enough to bolster SunPower’s faltering stock. It was dealt a blow today by Deutsche Securities, which downgraded the shares to hold from buy. At last check , shares of SunPower had fallen as much as 4.9 percent to change hands for $32.20.

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Data storage systems — computers that enable companies to store and access large amounts of data — might be a bit of a dry topic for a Monday morning. But this morning, computing company Sun Microsystems is launching a new set of data storage products that use open source and solid-state memory drives to cut their energy consumption to one quarter that of traditional data storage systems.

Solid state drives have no moving parts and require less power to operate than mechanical disk drives. While solid state drives aren’t used as commonly in current storage systems, Sun says that a smaller energy bill, combined with standard hardware and an open source system, means the storage product — dubbed the 7000 or Amber Road family — can offer cost savings of 75 percent compared with competing storage technology.

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John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ high profile green venture capitalist, told attendees at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday that cleantech is what’s growing in Silicon Valley. Perhaps not what a room full of Internet entrepreneurs wanted to hear, but Doerr and KPCB have changed investing strategies over the past couple years to reflect that trend — a third of Kleiner’s latest fund is allocated for cleantech and a third for digital media/web companies.

The current level of venture investment in cleantech — now the third largest investment area — isn’t even all that much, said Doerr, considering the massive opportunity. Two areas he sees that are underfunded are energy storage, including batteries and super capacitors, and geothermal power. KPCB has invested in a geothermal startup, AltraRock Energy.

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This year has brought more than its share of surprises to the energy industry, but the bankruptcy of ethanol giant VeraSun Energy was one that few would have predicted at the beginning of the year.

The stock started the year at $15.28, down from its June 2006 IPO price of $23 a share, but there was little indication of the sequence of hardships that would prompt the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which it did on Oct. 31. In VeraSun’s own words:

The Company suffered significant losses in the third quarter of 2008 from a dramatic spike in its corn costs, reflecting in part costs attributable to its corn procurement and hedging arrangements, and historically unfavorable margins. Beginning in the third quarter, worsening capital market conditions and a tightening of trade credit resulted in severe constraints on the Company’s liquidity position.

Corn and oil prices had been soaring when VeraSun locked into those arrangements. They have since plunged, making those contracts costly to maintain. Meanwhile, ethanol prices have also plunged, and cheaper oil means less demand for alternative fuels for now.

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Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy, two major utilities in the Southeast, have partnered to test a fleet of smart-charging plug-in electric Priuses in what they say will be the country’s first interstate electric car-charging scheme involving multiple utilities. Each of the Priuses will be equipped with a V2Green Connectivity Module while Advanced Energy, a non-profit focused on energy and transportation solutions, will design and implement the trial.

V2Green, which was bought by smart grid company GridPoint earlier this year, will also provide server-side software to manage the flow of electricity to and from the cars as the needs of the vehicles and grid dictate. The smart-charging system will maximize renewable energy resources when available and delay charging during peak demand hours.

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Time has released its 50 Best Inventions of 2008 list and a full dozen of the spots are occupied by either cleantech startups or energy ideas. From floating data centers to high-flying wind turbines, Time thinks some of the coolest inventions of the year are clean and green. We couldn’t agree more. Here are the cleantech highlights that Time thought were noteworthy.

2. The Tesla Roadster: Even though the company has hit a rough patch as of late, the Roadster is an undeniable automotive force that has electrified the industry. We’ll see how long it takes for the Model S to deliver a car to the masses.

7. The Chevy Volt: The range-extended electric offering is a bridge to full-on electric cars. GM hopes that it will also be able to prop up its faltering business. Too bad a slew of competitors are debuting all-electric models the same year.

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Computing companies that can access cheap green power in bulk will be the only ones able to afford to run data centers in the coming years, posits a new report entitled Microsoft and Google: Cloud Computing Dominance Through Renewable Energy, published today in Virtual Strategy Magazine. The report predicts a positive future for the burgeoning relationship between the biggest names in IT and renewable energy, but paints a grim picture for small-time data center operators that can’t afford to either make large power purchase agreements or produce their own energy.

The problem, argues author Steve Denegri, a IT consultant and financial analyst, is that data centers face two unstoppable forces - the need to increase computing power, which requires upping the energy per square foot, and the increasing price of electricity. Together, these two forces are sending data center operation costs through the roof. With carbon regulations likely coming into effect with the next administration, the only power sources with predictable and declining costs will be clean, renewable generation, and those who control those sources will have a competitive advantage when it comes to running power-hungry data centers.

These trends have led to a new business model, combining data center services and energy into “utility computing” where only huge data center operators, like Google ad Microsoft, can operate data centers at scales large enough to be profitable. This sort of vertically integrated data center operator was something I hypothesized last year when Google first announced its clean energy endeavor.

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U.S. businesses are creating new citizenship initiatives at a record pace. But meeting the pressures of various stakeholders and optimising strategy to take advantage of opportunities can be a daunting task. How are U.S. businesses meeting the challenges? How does globalization affect corporate citizenship? What are the roles for government, advocacy groups, and public-private partnerships? Economist Conferences present “Corporate Citizenship: Building a Sustainable Business,” Nov. 18-19 in San Francisco. The conference will address how leading companies are striving to be good corporate citizens, focusing on top-down strategies. Earth2Tech readers receive a discount of $500 off the $1,395 registration fee. Register here using the discount code GIGA1.