Can a solar company run a carmaker? And do we really want to find out? Well, Germany’s SolarWorld announced today that it wants to take the plunge into the auto industry with a bid for Adam Opel, the well-known German brand and a subsidiary of struggling General Motors since 1929. But analysts are very skeptical, and GM has flat-out denied the possibility.

“It’s pure speculation,” Geri Lama, a spokeswoman for GM, told us. “Opel is not for sale.”

SolarWorld, which makes solar modules for residences as well as large-scale solar plants, believes it can get Opel to go green, turning the automaker into a producer of more energy-efficient and low-emission vehicles.

SolarWorld said it’s planning to offer €250 million ($313.5 million) in cash, plus another €750 million in bank credit lines. But the company has put some high demands on the deal, saying that the credit lines are conditional on getting German government guarantees, and that a core prerequisite is the complete separation of Opel from GM, as well as compensation payments for all of Opel’s German jobs, totaling €1 billion. It’s not clear from SolarWorld’s statement whether GM is expected to cough up that compensation cash, or if it would come from the government.

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Corn-based ethanol has been crashing with the economy, but the prospects for cellulosic ethanol seem a little brighter — SunEthanol, based in Hadley, Mass., says it’s pulled in $25 million in a Series B round, and changed its name to boot. Now known as Qteros, after its Q microbe technology, the company raised the cash from a group including billionaire George Soros and big oil.

Noticeably absent from the list of investors is South Dakota’s VeraSun Energy, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. VeraSun took a minority stake in Qteros, then SunEthanol, in August 2007. (Qteros CEO William Frey tells us via email that despite not participating in this round VeraSun continues as a shareholder in the company.)

The Series B financing was led by new investor Venrock, along with previous investor Battery Ventures. Other new investors include London’s BP, no stranger to cleantech fundings, and Soros Fund Management. Series A backers Long River Ventures and Camros Capital also participated.

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New York’s Ener1 today announced a deal with Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power to develop rapid recharging stations for electric vehicles. Ener1 said that Kyushu Electric has already done work on an advanced rapid charging stand and plans to customize the system with a battery pack from Ener1’s lithium-ion battery subsidiary, EnerDel. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

With a rapid recharge system, Ener1 said drivers can plug in and recharge up to 80 percent of the vehicle’s battery capacity in under 20 minutes. Kyushu Electric serves more than 8 million customers on Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, which includes the cities of Nagasaki and Fukuoka.

Ener1 and Kyushu Electric plan to move quickly on the systems, with the first integrated charging station from the two companies due to be available by March 2009. But additional details weren’t disclosed, so it’s not clear how many, if any, of the new charging stations will be set up on Kyushu.

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To ethanol producers, the financial meltdown is like a rain storm beating down an already-flooded corn field. Combine this summer’s low corn prices with the political and public backlash against corn ethanol and add in the recent market conditions, and ethanol producers are finding themselves drowning. On Friday, ethanol producer Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings said it is suspending construction of a biorefinery in Aurora, Neb., and is extending the construction schedule of a biorefinery in Mount Vernon, Ind. We’ve added Aventine’s plant to our biofuels deathwatch map, and if the company decides to take its plant off hold, we’ll update it again.

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Aventine already has a biorefinery in Aurora that is producing ethanol, and the plant that is being put on hold was an additional plant, planned to produce 113 million gallons of ethanol per year. Aventine cited the “continued disappointing economics surrounding the production of ethanol,” as reason for the suspension and extended timeline and said the decision is “necessary to preserve liquidity.” The company, which says it supplied almost 690 million gallons of ethanol to the U.S. in 2007, saw its shares drop more than 12 percent in trading to $0.97.

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Tubular solar startup Solyndra piled on more sales contracts and today announced a $320 million deal with Carlisle Energy Services, a newly formed division of Carlisle Construction Materials. The deal is for 100 megawatts of panels over five years. Carlisle will work with an independent solar integrator to sell and install the cylindrical thin-film solar panels in conjunction with its Energy Star-certified, cool roof systems for commercial buildings.

The companies say that the reflective white roofing membrane boosts the electrical output of Solyndra’s solar panels, which can absorb sunlight from all directions, by 20 percent. Carlisle has already installed a Solyndra solar system on the roof of its roofing membrane manufacturing plant (see picture) and tells us the entire system went up in just one day.

This deal is in addition to Solyndra’s previously announced $1.2 billion in backlogged sales, which include contracts with German solar integrators GeckoLogic GmbH and Phoenix Solar as well as U.S.-based solar manufacturer and integrator Solar Power Inc. Today’s announced sale pushes Solyndra’s customer contracts up to $1.52 billion.

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New England will be getting more cash for environmentally friendly technologies under a new program announced today by Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell. A $9 million fund has been launched to make investments in seed and early-stage companies, focusing on renewable energy, energy efficiency, environmental remediation and clean water.

“We want to position Connecticut as the preferred location to grow cleantech jobs,” said Governor Rell in a statement. Cleantech companies could get up to $1 million from the new Connecticut Clean Tech Fund, which will be managed by Connecticut Innovations, a quasi-public authority responsible for technology investing in the state. Connecticut Innovations and the Department of Economic and Community Development have each made an initial commitment of $3 million for the new fund. The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, also run by Connecticut Innovations, is putting up $3 million for companies that meet its criteria.

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The Department of Defense is funding both sides of a new battle, not one between countries, but between battery technologies — lithium ion and lead acid. This week the department announced investments aimed at the development of automotive batteries that employ both technologies: $2.4 million to International Battery for lithium-ion batteries that can be swapped in for lead-acid batteries by soldiers in the field, and $2 million to Firefly Energy for lightweight lead-acid batteries made with carbon foam.

International Battery is designing its Lithium Ion 6TLi Battery to be the same size as currently deployed lead-acid batteries so that soldiers can swap them out on location. The Oakland, N.J.-based company says its battery has four times the energy, half the weight, a significantly longer life and enhanced combat readiness as compared to the current lead-acid battery systems.

Meanwhile, Firefly Energy is using carbon foam to make more lightweight lead-acid batteries for use in military and commercial trucks. The batteries are for the military’s “Silent Watch” program, which allows reconnaissance vehicles to turn off their noisy engines and instead power sensor and communication arrays silently with on-board batteries. This is the fourth time the DoD has provided funds to Firefly, bringing the total received $12.75 million.

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New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic said today that it’s seeking to raise up to NZ$30 million ($16.6 million) from a new public offering. The three-year-old company, whose algae technology involves harvesting wild algae and squeezing it into green crude oil, plans to sell up to 60 million shares at 50 New Zealand cents each. The money will be used to finish commercialization of its technology, which Aquaflow expects to take up to 18 months.

Aquaflow says its free-range algae approach allows it to save money on facilities and maintenance. Aquaflow is working with new partner UOP, a subsidiary of Honeywell, to process algae harvested from open-air sludge ponds and waste streams into high-quality fuels. UOP has years of experience in the petro-chemical refining business but has been moving into biofuels in earnest recently with its own Renewable Energy & Chemicals business and collaborations with aircraft maker Boeing, bio-oil vet Ensyn and the DOE.

Aquaflow raised funding through a public offering at the end of the 2006; it’s also received a NZ$3 million investment from renewable energy business Pure Power Global of Singapore, the company’s largest shareholder, according to Aquaflow’s prospectus. The company built its first pilot plant in 2007 and in September this year said it produced the first samples of its “green crude.” The shares will be made available to Australian investors starting Nov. 18; the offering will close in December.

Image courtesy of Aquaflow Bionomics.

Silicon solar startup Solaria is looking to more than double its funding with a new $100 million financing round, CEO Suvi Sharma confirmed with us today, and first reported by VentureWire. The Series D round would be used to add an additional 50-100 megawatts of production capacity by 2010 to its 25-megawatt line currently operating in the Philippines. To date, the 9-year-old startup has raised $77 million in funding.

The Fremont, Calif.-based startup takes standard crystalline silicon solar cells and slices them into thin strips, a process the company calls “cell multiplication technology.” The 2-millimeter-wide silicon strips are reassembled in a stripe pattern and then an optical concentrator is laid on top to focus light away from the gaps and onto the strips. The company says its unique module design has the same form, function and — most importantly — efficiency as traditional solar modules but uses half the amount of silicon material. Update: Solaria has a 10-year, 1.3-gigawatt solar cell supply deal with one of its backers, Australian German solar firm Q-Cells, that ensures it has access to materials.

In addition to Q-Cells, the company has other big backers, including Sigma Partners, NGEN and Moser Baer. The company has been relatively quiet since closing its $50 million Series C round in July 2007. The company is older than many other solar startups and has built an expansive partner network that includes BP Solar and Spire. Sharma tells us the company’s current customers are large project developers but Solaria is developing a series of “specialty modules” for different market segments which it hopes to start bringing to market in 2010, and the company is looking to hire a number of engineers to finish R&D on these new products.

Image courtesy of Solaria.

James Bond might want to pay attention to the new hybrid vehicle technology Freescale Semiconductor announced today: a regenerative braking system that will use a special “boost button” to release the recovered kinetic energy for “a burst of extra power.” The regenerative braking system, which collects kinetic energy during braking and stores it to give the car extra oomph during acceleration, is being developed in collaboration with McLaren Electronic Systems for Formula 1 race cars in 2010.

The Freescale/MES system wouldn’t work exactly like the boring regen system in your Prius. Regenerative systems in passenger vehicles collect kinetic energy during braking and store it for use in regular acceleration. Freescale and MES have more of a Batmobile/Knight Rider approach to using that banked energy. According to the press release: “The stored kinetic power is released using a “boost” button that delivers a burst of extra power to the car for a short period — for example, while overtaking a competitor or defending a position.” A sort of cleantechy afterburner, if you will.

Freescale says the main goal of the project is to increase the car’s fuel efficiency, which would mean fewer pit stops. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s (FIA), the governing body of world motorsports, has committed to greening motorspots, an effort that has also brought innovations from tire makers and biofuel brewers. It’s a truism in the auto world that many innovations, from biofuels to efficiency to crash safety, are trialed on the race track before becoming part of everyday driving, and this initiative is no exception. According to the companies, this Bond-esque technology will lead to smaller, lighter and more efficient hybrid systems in mainstream vehicles.

Image courtesy of FIA.