Author: Ucilia Wang

This article originally appeared on GigaOM Pro, our premium research subscription service.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has completed a study that comes up with two ways to use compressed air technology to store wind energy in underground chambers, the national lab said Monday. The two ways both use data and computer modelling to figure out the best sites that could successfully bank wind energy to be used at a later time.

Compressed air, as its name suggests, makes use of an electrically powered air compressor that sends pressurized air into a storage facility, which can be man-made or an underground reservoir. The pressurized air is let out later to run a turbine and generator to produce electricity. As much as 80 percent of the electricity used to compress air can be recovered when the pressurized air is used to generate energy, the lab said. Power losses are common when converting one form of energy to another.

Power in under ground caves

Utilities in the Northwest have a good reason for taking a look at energy storage technology. Wind power makes up about 13 percent (8.6 GW) of the power supply for the Northwest, the national lab said. Wind power tends to be most plentiful at night, when demand is at the lowest. Storing wind power for use during the day would help utilities meet their customers’ demand and manage their grids, which run smoothly when there is a balance of supply and demand. That prompted the Bonneville Power Administration to work with the lab to look into whether compressed air would be a good fit.

Many U.S. utilities or power producers have done preliminary studies or even pilot projects to check out different types of energy storage technologies, including various types of batteries. Often their regulators require them to gradually increase the amount of renewable energy they supply to their customers. Wind and solar have been popular choices, but they don’t generate a steady supply of electricity around the clock. Here is where energy storage comes in handy to help utilities manage their supply and demand.

The researchers were looking for two suitable underground sites for storing compressed air. They used data from gas exploration in Washington state and a computer model that simulates the flow of fluids underground. The idea is to see how much air a site can hold and how easy it’d be for the air to be harvested for power generation. For the study, an ideal underground storage would be at least 1,500 feet deep and 30 feet thick, and it should be close to transmission lines, the lab said.

Pacific Northwest

They found two locations, a place by the Columbia River, just across from Boardman, Ore., and another one in the Yakima Canyon that is roughly 10 miles north of Selah, Wash.

The scientists then sketched out two different processes for storing and re-using energy. At the Columbia River location, which is close to a natural gas pipeline, a compressed air storage plant can use natural gas to heat the compressed air and in the process boost the amount of electricity that can be produced.

At the Yakima location, the facility can use geothermal heat to run a chiller, which will in turn cool the air compressor to make it run more efficiently. Geothermal energy also can heat up the compressed air when it’s released from storage.

Bonneville will now take the results of the $790,000 study and do a round of cost-and-benefit analysis to figure out if compressed air makes for a good business case.

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Solar company SunPower plans to roll out its first energy storage product, possibly lithium-ion batteries, in a bid to expand its share of the rooftop solar market, company executives said on Wednesday during the company’s analyst day. CEO Tom Werner told analysts that selling energy increasingly will require more comprehensive solutions, including energy storage technologies, and explained “this is a fundamental change in how solar companies compete.”

Adding energy storage reflects the evolution of the company, which started off as a solar cell and panel maker before it entered the power plant development business. SunPower has carried out pilot energy storage projects in recent years and worked with different energy storage technologies, including advanced lead acid and zinc bromide batteries.

But lithium-ion batteries “will likely be the first technology to have an impact,” said Jack Peurach, executive vice president of products. The emergence of electric cars plays a role in making lithium-ion battery the front runner for being paired with solar, he added.

SunPower executives didn’t provide details, such as the timing and battery suppliers, for its energy storage plans. But the discussion puts SunPower on a growing roster of solar energy companies that are offering or plan to offer energy storage.

SolarCity, for example,  has been bundling lithium-ion batteries from Tesla Motors with its solar energy systems and applying for a California program that subsidizes energy storage installations. One Roof Energy is working with battery maker Silent Power to roll out products. Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, which runs a solar panel manufacturing subsidiary, is an investor in both OneRoof and Silent Power. SunEdison has done a pilot project with a battery system from startup Seeo.

Energy storage will be part of SunPower’s plan to expand its reach in the commercial and residential market, where it sells power purchase agreements or leases via its dealers or its own project development business. The company designs the power purchase agreements for its commercial and government customers and leases for homeowners. Power purchase agreements and leases work in similar ways: business or home owners sign a long-term contract of up to 20 years and pay a monthly fee for the solar electricity from the SunPower solar energy systems on their rooftops.

SunPower’s foray into the energy storage business will prompt more comparison with SolarCity, which started in 2006 as purely a solar installer. SolarCity is most active in the residential and commercial markets, but it scored the first utility project last year. As a result, the two companies have been competing more intensely in recent years.

In fact, a lawsuit filed by SunPower against SolarCity and five people last year highlighted that rivalry. The lawsuit accused five former SunPower employees of stealing confidential data and brought the data with them when they went to work for SolarCity. The two companies settled on Dec. 31, 2012, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit in January, SolarCity said in its 2012 annual report. It didn’t disclose the amount of the settlement.

SunPower executives didn’t say whether they will sell energy storage in the United States first or in other regions. Werner said that, for now, energy storage makes financial sense only in markets that offers government incentives. That would include California, Germany and Japan.

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Peer-to-peer car sharing service appeals to the urban and young people, and  that partly explains why college campuses and large cities like San Francisco have been the labs for companies such as RelayRides and Getaround.

One of the benefits of this type of the service is the ability for customers to rent a car by the minute or hour, something that traditional rental car companies don’t allow. But for San Francisco-based RelayRides, an increasing number of its customers are paying for daily, weekly or even monthly rentals, said Steve Webb, the company spokesman. The majority of RelayRides’ revenues come from those types of rentals, he said.

That trend is good news for car owners who are able to part with their cars for an extended period of time. They could make more money with fewer renters. That also cuts the amount of time the car owners would need to meet with their customers — RelayRides switched to promoting the in-person exchange of keys last year when it pushed for a national expansion.

The peer-to-peer car sharing market is growing but remains very small. To scale up, a car sharing service has to market well and sign up a large network of cars, create an easy way for car owners to manage rentals and get paid and for renters to reserve and find the types of cars they want. A good customer service unit to settle any dispute and resolve insurance and other issues is also a must. As GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher pointed out, getting people to feel comfortable using the service remains a hurdle. Webb said many car owners prefer to meet their renters in person before handing over the keys.

Still, RelayRides decided it wanted a way for renters to access cars without having to arrange for a meet up. It announced yesterday the purchase of a competitor, Wheelz, which has developed software that allows renters to find, reserve and unlock cars using their smart phones. An electronic device installed inside the car makes unlocking with the phone possible.

This automated tech was something RelayRides used to hire people to install regularly. But it was too costly and time consuming that the company largely ditched that effort, though it still offers it to car owners who rent out their cars frequently, Webb said. The device and software aren’t proprietary technology and are designed for running fleet services. Buying Wheelz gives RelayRides its own technology that it can then customize and compete more effectively against the likes of Getaround, which gives the car owners the unlocking device that they can install themselves.

Will the long-term focus for peer-to-peer car sharing be a long-term trend? What do you guys think?

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What are the challenges of growing a solar installation company? SolarCity provides some good insight into that question as it reports earnings for the first full quarter since it became a public company last December.

Raising funds to support its financial product offerings, signing up a greater number of new customers, expanding its operations, and shortening the project completion process are just some of the issues outlined by SolarCity’s executives during their discussion with financial analysts yesterday.

These issues are nothing new, of course, but SolarCity’s financial results help to quantify some of their costs. Given that the solar market is still young, most of SolarCity’s competitors are private and often much smaller.

The California company installed more megawatts of solar energy projects during the first quarter than it initially anticipated (46MW instead of 41MW). But it didn’t raise its 2013 installation forecast, which remains at 250 MW this year. SolarCity boosted its first-quarter sales to $28.2 million but posted $31 million in losses.

“At this stage, we still find ourselves delivery constrained. It’s a matter of scaling our residential operation as well as bringing in our commercial projects on schedule that prevent us from increasing the guidance from 250MW right now,” said CEO Lyndon Rive during the conference call. “We are just focusing our operational capacity.”

SolarCity runs on a business model that is quite different from many of its competitors. The company does the sales, engineering, installation and maintenance with its in-house crew. Rivals such as Sungevity, OneRoof Energy, Sunrun and Clean Power Finance farm out the installation and maintenance work to roofers and other installers. Some of them want to build their brands and invest in marketing and sales to consumers while others sell their financial products and services to installers. Vivint, which has built a large home security system business before getting into solar, operates more like SolarCity.

SolarCity’s model requires much more capital to scale up the business. It needs to hire and train more people, maintain trucks and other tools of the trade and set up shop in expanding its reach across the country. It also has to aggressively court consumers.

The company does business in 14 states, and in March it announced a plan to set up operations in Nevada. The company saw its operating expenses grow from $24.7 million in the first quarter of 2012 to $34.5 million a year later. It serves home and business owners, as well as schools and government agencies. It’s getting into the utility market, too. By the end of the first quarter, SolarCity had accumulated 54,416 customers, and most of those customers are in the residential space: 33MW of the 46MW it completed during the first quarter went to homes.

Raising enough money to finance leases and power purchase agreements is another big challenge for SolarCity and its competitors. With leases or power purchase agreements, customers pay a monthly fee for the electricity generated from the solar panels on their rooftop. They don’t own the panels, however, since they didn’t pay for the high upfront costs of the equipment and labor that can run around $20,000 for an average system in places like California.

The investors that give the funds that support those financing options own the solar electric systems, and they get to take advantage of a 30 percent federal investment tax credit and count on revenues from the monthly payments for the duration of the contracts, which usually run 20 years. As of May 10, SolarCity has enough funds to finance 158MW worth of projects.

SolarCity is a formidable fundraiser. In its 2012 annual report, the company said it had raised $1.7 billion to finance installations since its inception from companies such as U.S. Bancorp, Google, PG&E and Credit Suisse. SolarCity also puts in its own money in some of the funds to finance the installations. The pressure to raise money consistently is even greater now that SolarCity is a public company and must not only show growth but also generate profits at some point. It doesn’t want to be in a situation where the demand for its leases outstrips the funds available, something that happened to SunPower during the first quarter of this year.

SolarCity also needs to shorten the amount of time it takes from selling solar panel systems to installing each project. It has 195MW of backlog, some of which are planned as multi-year projects. But overall, the company wants to sell and install the equipment during the same month, Rive said. To accomplish that, the company is constantly looking for ways to simplify the installation process by using different designs for racks and other components. It also invests in software to reduce the time it takes to apply for permits and complete the sales process.

SolarCity has been an interesting company to watch since its start in 2006. It was one of a crop of venture-backed companies in the emerging residential solar market. Now, how well the company can grow its business and make a profit will be used by investors to evaluate other solar retail service companies that want to go public.

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Cyber security has emerged as something that almost all power grid companies worry about and invest in, and entrepreneurs and startups are innovating to deliver new types of security solutions for the power grid. For example, an under the radar company called GridCOM Technologies tells us it’s developing a new tool based on quantum physics that could protect the grid from such digital security attacks.

Founded only last year, GridCOM’s technology uses something called quantum cryptography to generate codes using photons (tiny packets of light) that shield communications among a network of electronic equipment from the computers that control power transmission to smart meters. Quantum cryptography uses physics (instead of math like conventional encryption does) to secure cyber communications.

GridCOM’s approach is quite different from the conventional mathematically-based encryption methods traditional used to protect communications over the Internet, said Duncan Earl, co-founder and CTO of GridCOM and a former researcher in the Cyberspace Sciences and Information Intelligence Research group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These conventional methods have worked fairly well and have been around long enough to be affordable, but they also don’t offer the speed and potency that some owners of sensitive energy data might want, Earl said.

The startup, based in Carlsbad near San Diego, recently raised a round of seed money from Ellis Energy Investment. Earl declined to disclose the amount but said Ellis is “committed to funding us for the next two years.”

Smart grid cyber threats

GridCOM is counting on a growing concern by utility executives over the security of their networks. Up until now, cybersecurity attacks on utility grids have been pretty rare. The grid hasn’t been vulnerable mainly because the computers and other equipment historically used by utilities have been mostly analog, not digital, and they have been designed with proprietary, customized technologies for each utility’s closed-off network.

The push to deploy smart grid technologies, however, is transforming the grid to include more digital devices with common technical standards and communication protocols. In addition, the reliance of the Internet for some of the network creates a vulnerability that didn’t exist before.

While utility executives are thinking more about cybersecurity these days, they don’t necessarily want to spend much money to enhance it, as this report by the U.S. Department of Energy pointed out. The report said evolving regulations on cybersecurity, which is a fairly new problem, also makes it difficult for utilities to draft and deploy good plans.

The secret security sauce

GridCOM’s core technology lies in the quantum server that will generate lots of “keys,” each of which is a string of 200 random bits of 0′s and 1′s that can encrypt a message very quickly. The startup’s customers will be able to download as many of those keys as necessary. The keys can work within 4 milliseconds, which is the amount of time that a utility’s machines will need to communicate with one another should there be an emergency on the grid, Earl said. Conventional encryption methods take longer and allow for a hacker to eavesdrop and disrupt the communications.

The source of the keys comes from what’s called “quantum entangled photons.” Say what? Well, when a light source goes through a crystal, it generates a pair of photons that are twins with polar opposite characteristics. Those photons share a bond called entanglement, which makes it difficult to distinguish them and figure out what message they have encrypted. To break that encryption, the hacker will have to figure out which photon has which characteristic. And the act of measuring a photon will in fact alert the quantum server of the intrusion.

Sounds hard to crack? The encryption and detection system is “nearly unbreakable,” says Earl. Each GridCom system is consisted of a quantum server, eight receivers and fiber optic lines. The startup plans to make money by charging a subscription fee, which in the near term would be $50 per device per month.

GridCOM still has to prove that its technology could do wonders in real life, though. Quantum cryptography has long been a subject of academic research, but it hasn’t been widely adopted. Using it for the typical email and Internet or even cellular communications is too expensive.

Those communications involve so many devices and high levels of data traffic that each network will need quite a few of quantum servers to generate tons and tons of keys, Earl said. Communications between machines in a power grid, on the other hand, happen less frequently. There are a handful of quantum cryptography companies out there, such as ID Quantique in Switzerland, Earl noted.

GridCOM is only in the early stages of developing its technology. It is now engineering the quantum servers and assembling them itself. The company aims to deploy a test network of 20-mile radius in the San Diego area by the end of this year. It would like to do a larger demonstration project with a first subscriber in 2014, Earl said. The company also plans to target the oil and gas industry.

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After dealing with a market that’s been flooded with low cost solar panels for over two years, solar panel makers are now starting to reverse that trend. First Solar is sold out of its solar panels into the third quarter of the year, company executives said Monday.

The announcement came after SunPower executives said last week that demand in the hot Japanese market exceeded what the company could deliver during the first quarter. Last month, market research firm IHS reported that the average wholesale prices for silicon panels delivered to Europe rose for the first time in several years.

The shift has come at a heavy cost to solar manufacturers like First Solar and SunPower, however. For over two years, solar panel makers have had to reduce production or even shutter factories while posting losses quarter after quarter. Dozens have filed for bankruptcy, including Germany’s Alfasolar, as reported by PV Magazine Monday. The bankruptcy of Suntech Power’s main subsidiary in March rattled the industry, particularly those who have bought the Chinese company’s solar panels.

First Solar, which makes solar panels and develops solar power plants, closed its big manufacturing plant in Germany last year and suspended plans to build new factories in Vietnam and Arizona. Those moves as well as First Solar’s efforts to reduce its spending on administration and, to a lesser extent, research development and sales, have allowed the company to survive the downturn. First Solar brought in new top executives over the past year and presented a convincing plan last month for improving its technology and sales in emerging markets for the next several years.

For the past three years, First Solar’s executives have discussed in earnest the need to grab market share in emerging markets such as India, China, the Middle East and Latin America. Germany was once its largest market, but the country, which has steadily reduced its government incentives for solar energy generation, accounted for just three percent of its sales in 2012, according to First Solar’s 2012 annual report.

In an earnings discussion with analysts on Monday, First Solar’s CEO Jim Hughes pointed out that the company has expanded its market reach since early 2012. Back then, it was talking mostly about sales in the United States, Canada, India, Europe and Australia. Its purchase of a Chilean solar power developer earlier this year created a new talking point about Latin America. The Chilean company was developing about 1.5 GW of projects when First Solar announced the acquisition. Overall, First Solar is working on about 1.8 GW of projects in Latin America, though those projects are under development and the company isn’t promising that all of them will succeed.

Hughes also announced that the company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia for the second phase of a 2GW plan that it first announced in 2009. The second phase will see First Solar supplying 300 MW-500 MW of solar panels, and construction could start in the second half of 2014. The first phase, a 30MW project, is set to start construction in the third quarter of this year, he added.

Meanwhile, the company is building some of the world’s largest solar power plants right here in California. One of them, the 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One in Los Angeles County, has run into “weather-related delays” during the first quarter of this year. That partly contributed to lower earnings from the previous quarter. Completion of the project is now set for the end of this year rather than the second quarter.

The company generated $755 million in sales for the first quarter of this year, down $320 million from the previous quarter but up $258 million from the year-ago period. It posted $59.1 million in net income, or $0.66 per share for the first quarter, $154.2 million in net income, or $1.74 per share for the fourth quarter of 2012. It reported $449.4 million, or $5.20 per share, in losses for the first quarter of 2012.

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Solar leases have become a popular way for consumers to use solar electricity without paying for the expensive upfront price. Case in point: demand for SunPower’s residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them, company executives said Thursday.

“Our residential lease business remains strong, with demand outstripping our financial capacity in the first quarter,” said Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, during a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.

The Silicon Valley company signed over 2,100 leases during the first quarter, bringing the cumulative total to over 16,200. SunPower launched the lease program in 2011. The lease sign up rate is roughly the same as in 2012, during which it signed up 11,415 of them through its network of dealers, or roughly 2,800 of them per quarter.

Homeowners who sign leases, which run 20 years, pay a monthly fee for using the solar electricity from the solar panels installed on their rooftops. They don’t own the equipment and aren’t responsible for its maintenance or repairs. SunPower raises money from investors to finance the leases. The investors, which include banks and companies such as Google, put up the money partly to take advantage of a federal tax credit that amounts to 30 percent of the price of all the solar energy system installed using their funds.

Since the lease business is fairly new, it hasn’t been making a big impact on SunPower’s financial performance though. The company’s shares shot up 17 percent after its earnings announcement mainly because it delivered better financial results than expected.

The company generated $635.4 million in revenue for the first quarter, up 29 percent from the $494.1 million for the first quarter in 2012. It narrowed its losses to $54.7 million , or $0.46 per share, from $74.5 million, or $0.67 per share, year over year.

SunPower makes solar panels and develops power plants. It’s building two huge projects in California.  It has installed over 90 percent of the solar panels for the 250MW power plant called California Valley Solar Ranch, which is owned by NRG Solar. It recently started building two projects totaling 579MW that their owner, MidAmerican Solar, called Antelope Valley Solar Projects.

Internationally, SunPower continues to do well in Japan, a hot market that began offering fat incentives for solar energy generation after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011. Through mostly Toshiba and a little through Sharp, SunPower’s seeing more demand for its solar panels in Japan than it had anticipated, Werner said. Sales volumes doubled from 2011 to 2012 and could double again in 2013, said Howard Wenger, the company’s head of global sales and development.

Most of the company’s solar panels are going to residential rooftops in Japan. Living space tends to be small (and more efficiently used) in Japan than it’s the case in the United States, so SunPower’s highly efficient solar panels are a good fit, its executives said. Its silicon solar panels can convert about 21 percent of the sunlight into electricity, higher than other silicon solar panels on the market today. Silicon solar panels accounted for 89 percent of the solar panels made in 2012, according to GTM Research.

SunPower has had to cut production and costs in the past two years as the global solar market saw a pricing collapse from an oversupply of solar panels.

The average wholesale prices worldwide fell 50 percent from 2011 to 2012 while demand for them grew only 5 percent during 2012, said NPD SolarBuzz. Dozens of solar panel makers around the world have filed for bankruptcy.

SunPower executives said they have beaten their cost-cutting goals.

“It’s brutal to be exclusively a module manufacturer,” Werner said. “As you look at SunPower, we moved from modules originally to systems a few years ago, and what we sell today is energy in the form of leases or PPA (power purchase agreements).”

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A startup spun out of Northwestern University, called SiNode Systems, is building a lithium ion battery using a piece of graphene drilled with tiny holes. The unusual structure can boost the amount of energy that a battery can hold by ten times, and can also enable the battery to be charged much more swiftly than conventional lithium ion batteries.

While the Evanston, Ill.-based startup is only a year old, it’s made some substantial progress this year, and this month SiNode Systems won over $900,000 in the Rice Business Plan Competition. The startup is now working on raising an additional $1.5 million to bring its technology out of the lab, Guy Peterson, director of commercialization and manufacturing at SiNode, told us in an interview.

SiNode Systems is building on research developed by Northwestern Professor Harold Kung, whose work focuses on the use of a composite of silicon nanoparticles and graphene for the anode part of a battery. A battery is made up of an anode and a cathode and an electrolyte in between, and electrically charged lithium ions flow between the anode and the cathode to discharge or charge the battery.

SiNode’s core intellectual technology involves creating a porous structure in the graphene to speed up the movement of electrons between the anode and the cathode and to stabilize the silicon, creating a sort of scaffolding around it. Silicon swells and contracts quickly and could fall apart easily without a supporting structure.

Lithium ion batteries on the market today typically use graphite for the anode. For the cathode, cobalt oxide is commonly used for consumer electronics while other compounds, such as iron phosphate and manganese oxide are also found in electric cars and power tools.

Lab work has shown that SiNode’s technology could lead to an anode with roughly ten times more energy capacity than the conventional graphite anode, said Guy Peterson, director of commercialization and manufacturing at SiNode. A higher capacity will create a battery that can keep your mobile phone working longer before you have to charge it.

So what does a better anode mean for the overall energy capacity of the battery, which is ultimately what battery retailers and consumers would want to know? Peterson declined to say, partly because the company is still working on that number.

The graphene structure also makes it possible to cut the charging time of the anode by about 10 times compared with the typical charging time of a smart phone at home, Peterson said.

A promising technology needs to marry a low-cost manufacturing process to find success in the market, especially when the technology is targeting the consumer electronics market and there is no shortage of major battery makers and startups working on using silicon and other compounds to improve the anode’s performance (see our list of 13 battery startups to watch).

Peterson said SiNode is working on a production process that promises to be less complicated than some of the existing methods. The process creates a sheet of material at the end rather than a powder.

“A lot of competitors take two steps forward in performance and four steps back in scalability,” Peterson said. “We can offer performance and scalability.”

SiNode plans to supply the anode material or license its technology or both. The company is still working on its business model and manufacturing plans.

From the Rice competition, the startup is set to receive $700,000 in equity investments, $110,000 in cash and $101,400 in office space, marketing and other business services.

Photos courtesy of Northwestern University

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Following a record breaking year for rooftop solar panels in the U.S. in 2012, you can expect a flood of information overload on how to go about getting solar panels installed on your rooftop. Choosing the right solar panel service company has long taken a considerable amount of detective work to figure out what you want and what you need.

As with any retail service, consumers should expect a straight-forward dealing with installers and get what they’re promised. Most consumers, though, have no previous experiences shopping for solar, so that makes it more difficult to spot shady language in a contract or missing steps in the purchase process. An online search of solar installers in your town could turn up a long list of companies.

To help you combat the mass of information, as well as any misinformation, we created this cheat sheet of things you should consider:

1). The initial query: While you could start with a Google search for solar installers in your area, a better way is contacting your local utility or the city or state agency that oversees these utilities. Often times they have a list of installers who have already gotten the necessary certification to perform solar panel installations. California has such a statewide database. Nevada has one, too. So does New York.

2). Learn about the incentives in your region: Incentives are gonna be the key for you to figure out if you can afford solar panels. The best resource we’ve found for solar incentives by state is this great website, funded by the Department of Energy. You also could find out about rebates or tax breaks from your local utility or installers. Still, it’s a good idea to find an alternative source of information to verify what you’ve been told. The DOE-backed database not only lists incentives by states, it also includes a link to each state’s agency that administers the subsidies. From there you also could find whom to contact to ask about certified installers.

3). How to pay for it:  An average-size system of solar panels, between 3KW and 5KW, costs around $18,000-$25,000 in California, according to the current pricing posted by the state’s solar program website, which is filled with other good information. The pricing in your region may be different, so comparison shop! If you can afford to buy and own a system, then you can reap the most savings over time.

If you can’t put up that much money upfront, then you now have many options to lease or get loans. You could sign up for leases in which you pay a monthly fee for solar electricity without owning the equipment. The company that provides the financing would own the system. A lease typically runs 15-20 years. Because of the growing popularity of the leases, you will likely hear about them from the installers you are interviewing. Check your local banks for loans. Admirals Bank, for example, recently launched a division that provides solar loans nationwide.

4). Lease vs. PPA: Some installers offer leases, while others do power purchase agreements. In a lease, you would usually pay a fixed amount each month regardless of how much electricity the solar panels produce (though that monthly fee may go up at some point during the lifetime of the contract). In a power purchase agreement, you agree to an electric rate and pay for the amount of electricity produced. That means your payment will likely vary from month to month, and the electric rate generally will go up over time. Sometimes installers can only provide one or the other because of local regulations governing electricity sales.

5). Gear research: There is no shortage of solar panel makers, who have more or less standardized the designs and warranties of the equipment (here’s a video about how a solar panel generates electricity). There isn’t a consumer-friendly rating system to say which manufacturers produce better products than others.

You can do your own online research, such as checking out who are among the top 10 solar panel makers in the world. But those make it onto the list because of the size of their factories. Many of those who aren’t on the top 10 also make quality products.

The key is to ask your installers about how long a manufacturer has been in business, any complaints from other consumers, and the repair and return policy. It’s no different than shopping for electronic equipment or appliances.

6). The promise: As with any financing contract, you want to read it very carefully and make sure you understand what you’ve been promised. Many installers promote the idea that if you go solar, you will end up paying less for electricity than you would otherwise. That’s an attractive proposition, especially if you have a high energy bill. But understand that those savings may not happen right away but over time.

No one can predict energy prices many years from now. Those prices depend heavily on the types of fuels used, changing regulations that might add to the cost of generation electricity and market demand. If your utility can’t promise what your electric rate will be in 10 years, how can anyone else promise that you will always pay a lower rate by going solar?

7). Keeping the system running: If you own the solar panels, then you are responsible for their upkeep. The equipment usually doesn’t require a lot of cleaning, though you may not be in such luck if you live in a dusty area or your roof is a magnet for birds. Sometimes squirrels can develop a taste for electrical cables of the system.

Your solar panels are connected to an inverter, which converts the direct current from the solar panels to the alternating current for use around the house. The inverter, therefore, can tell you if the power production dips lower than usual. You should regularly check on the inverter’s reading , and you should be able to do that on your computer or even smart phone.

If you opt for a lease or power purchase agreement, then the company that provides the financing is responsible for the equipment’s upkeep. The financing company may not be the installer who set up the solar panels on your roof, and it may end up hiring someone else to do any maintenance and repair work. You should understand who is in charge of servicing the equipment.

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First Solar is buying an under-the-radar startup called TetraSun to add expertise around silicon solar cell manufacturing to its technology portfolio, which until now has focused on using the material cadmium telluride to make solar cells.

The Arizona-based thin film solar giant announced the pending acquisition on Tuesday during its analyst day — its first since 2009 — in which it laid out a persuasive technology and business development plan for the next five years. Investors liked what they heard and pushed the company’s stock up by nearly 50 percent during trading.

The announcement also came after the company’s top executives spent the entire day taking shots at silicon solar technology, which they said hasn’t been able to make a big leap in its sunlight-to-electricity conversion rate for years and is approaching the theoretical limit of its efficiency. First Solar’s bread and butter cadmium telluride, on the other hand, has a higher theoretical efficiency limit, and First Solar has shifted its businesses focus from building large factories to make panels with cadmium-telluride cells to developing more efficient panels, said CEO Jim Hughes during the event.

Who is TetraSun?

So why TetraSun? Apparently Silicon Valley-based TetraSun has some disruptive silicon cell designs that set it apart from the rest of the silicon solar companies. Its designs require fewer manufacturing steps to produce conventional silicon cells, and eliminates the need for silver and transparent conductive oxide. Silver is used to transport electricity produced by the cells, while the oxide is a coating that protects the cells and helps the semiconductor material (such as silicon or cadmium telluride) to grab the light more effectively to produce electricity.

First Solar claims that TetraSun’s cells also can perform better in hot climates than conventional silicon cells. That feature will make solar panels with TetraSun’s cells more desirable in places like the Middle East and India, two markets with a lot of potentials for growth. First Solar says it plans to start making TetraSun’s cells in the second half of 2014.

First Solar believes TetraSun’s technology could produce cells at an over 21 percent efficiency at a cost that is comparable to the expense of making conventional — yet less efficient– silicon solar cells. Most silicon cells today have efficiencies in the mid-teens. SunPower stands out in its ability to make silicon cells at nearly 23 percent, but the company uses a more expensive type of silicon and has its own special cell designs to achieve that high efficiency.

TetraSun has been quiet about its technology development, and its website is just a landing page. Its name did show up as a recipient of a U.S. Department of Energy grant, announced back in January 2010.

First Solar is buying TetraSun from JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. and other investors, and it expects to complete the acquisition in the second quarter of 2013. It’s not disclosing the price for the acquisition.

First Solar also talking to JX Nippon about selling solar panels with TetraSun’s cells in Japan, which has become a hot market since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011 prompted the government to offer generous subsidies for renewable energy generation.

An efficiency play

First Solar previously used its manufacturing scale and efficient production process to roll out solar panels more quickly than its competitors. That enabled First Solar to sell its panels at a much lower price even though the panels weren’t as efficient. But the plummeting prices for silicon, which is used in the majority of the solar panels made today, has eroded that pricing advantage for First Solar and prompted the company to focus on improving its solar panels’ efficiency. More efficient solar panels could fetch higher prices because they allow developers to build a same-size power plant with less land.

But First Solar apparently doesn’t want to rely on just one semiconductor material for its solar panels. It once worked on developing solar panels with copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS), but it scrapped that program over a year ago. Supposedly the decision to ditch that effort came partly because First Solar was posting losses and looking for ways to cut costs. The company’s chief technology officer, Raffi Garabedian, told analysts on Tuesday that CIGS technology has taken the most private and public funding, yet it still isn’t likely be able to deliver the big efficiency improvements that cadmium telluride can over time.

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Taipei, Taiwan: It was a powerful (6.0) earthquake that ripped through central Taiwan that caused me to think about the similarities between Japan and Taiwan’s energy futures. A day after I arrived in Taiwan a little over two weeks ago, the strong earthquake caused my family’s apartment of the 11th floor in Taipei to sway back and forth — the tremor killed one person, injured at least 19 near the epicenter and invited anti-nuclear newspaper articles the following morning.

As a close neighbor of Japan, Taiwan’s energy future shares similarities for both energy technology development as well as energy challenges. Both island countries have traditionally relied mostly on imported fossil fuel resources and are highly earthquake prone, which have fueled intense debates over nuclear power policies as well as a further push into clean energy.

A week after the quake, I hiked to a seaside town about two hours south of Taipei, and was greeted with a coastline dotted with wind turbines. On another excursion during the trip, a hydroelectric dam near Taipei exposed distressingly low water levels and a big swath of dry lake shores. The water from the reservoir irrigates farms and supplies drinking water for homes and businesses. Like parts of the U.S. gripped by drought, Taiwan needs more rain and to figure out ways to make up for the shortfall.

Renewable energy, resource conservation and protests over nuclear power are nothing new in the history of energy development in many parts of the world. But population and economic growth, which taxes and at times destroys our environment, requires much more thoughtful planning for where and how we produce energy. Taiwan, along with mainland China, and post-Fukushima Japan, are increasingly being forced to address these issues.

Look to Japan

Japan has become a hot market for solar energy and other renewable energy generation, as well as energy storage, after an earthquake wrecked the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. The government put in place generous subsidies for alternative energy development. Both IHS and Bloomberg New Energy Finance predict that Japan will add more solar power generation than any country except China in 2013.

The Fukushima disaster prompted Taiwan to re-examine its nuclear power policy and stirred protests against the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant, which is actually close to completion.

Taiwan also subsidizes clean power and plans to increase solar and wind energy development. Late last year, the government raised the 2013 target for new solar energy generation by 30 percent to 130 megawatts. The country is pushing for wind farm construction on the coast because it already has made use of suitable wind resource island, according to Taiwan Power Co. By the end of 2012, Taiwan had 559.66 megawatts of cumulative wind power generation capacity and 134.3 megawatts of solar power generation capacity, the utility said.

Renewable electricity generation capacity (excluding hydropower) accounted for just over 6 percent of Taiwan’s total (41.4 gigawatts). In terms of the actual power produced — solar and wind farms can’t generate power around the clock — and renewable electricity made up nearly 3 percent of the total power produced, according to Taiwan Power’s most recent, 2012 sustainability report.

Solar energy should play a larger in Taiwan given that, like Japan, Taiwan is home to major solar cell makers. Promoting more solar energy production also will help Taiwan’s domestic solar manufacturers, who also have been hit hard by an oversupply of solar cells in the global market over the past two years. The glut has caused prices to crash and forced many solar manufacturers to go out of business.

One of the largest Taiwanese solar cell makers, Neo Solar Power, recently announced a survival plan to merge with another Taiwanese solar cell maker, DelSolar. Neo Solar said the combined company will have “close to 2 gigawatts” of production capacity, which would be comparable to First Solar’s  capacity of 1.9 gigawatts.

For Taiwan and its 23.3 million people, adding more solar and wind power makes economic sense and helps it to gradually reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels and perhaps its own struggle with whether to build more nuclear power plants over the long run. As the nation takes cues from Japan, and others, expect to see a greater push into clean power, and more controversy over nuclear.

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An idea that would have seemed blasphemous five years ago is coming into vogue for the battered cleantech sector: rather than displace the fossil fuel industry, embrace them. Increasingly companies selling energy efficiency and clean power technologies are looking to the oil and gas sectors as potential customers, instead of competitors.

The evidence of that was ample at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco this week. Through keynote speeches and panel discussions, the conference emphasized opportunities in the traditional energy industry and a growing symbiotic relationship between cleantech developers and big energy companies.

Behind the trend

Several forces have emerged in recent years that have been contributing to this trend. First off, venture capitalists have been shying away from investing in cleantech startups in areas like new types of solar panels, or biofuels. Many of the investors have yet to make their money back, due to the long timelines and large capital requirements needed for the companies to mature. It could also be that “righteous investing” gave them blinders to good investments.

With the lack of investments from VCs, startups are increasingly looking to corporations to help them with funding. And the companies that tend to be interested in investing in next-generation energy technologies, are — not surprisingly — the traditional energy companies. For example, natural gas provider Encana recently backed thermoelectric tech startup Alphabet Energy, Shell has been hunting for startups through its GameChanger program, and Total has made a variety of investments into cleantech companies over the years, including SunPower.

Meanwhile, the emergence of abundant and cheap natural gas has changed the energy game in the U.S. It’s providing traditional industry jobs to many states, and has been embraced by the Obama administration as a clean energy opportunity. There will be massive opportunities when it comes to selling next-generation technologies to natural gas firms and helping natural gas providers avoid environmental problems.

The growth of the renewable electricity sector will be tied to natural gas. Solar and wind generation can’t produce power around the clock, and utilities will have to match clean power with 24/7 energy like natural gas. Natural gas proponents have stepped up efforts to form alliances with renewable energy players, some of whom see the pairing as a practical approach to promote clean power generation.

Cleaning up fossil fuels

Energy executives “are all excited about the unconventional oil and gas in North America, and they know it will only take one or two environmental disasters for the game to be over,” said Wal van Lierop, co-founder and CEO of cleantech venture capital firm Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, when I caught up with him at the Cleantech Forum.

To gain public confidence, comply with regulations and, in some cases, reduce risks and production costs, oil and gas producers are hunting for technologies that clean up wastes, recycle water and boost production. And if any of these technologies can earn a low-carbon designation and help with public relations, then all the better. The Texas Tribune ran an interesting story this week that looked at oil companies attempts to recycle dirty water from oil production.

Chrysalix is fond of backing companies that can serve oil and gas, as well as mining, companies. It’s invested in GlassPoint Solar, which designs steam generation equipment to help oil companies boost production; Axine Water Technologies, which offers a way to get pollutants out of wastewater from industrial operations and cities; and Seair, a public wastewater treatment company whose CEO, Ric Charron, spoke about his experience working with oil and gas companies at the cleantech conference.

While helping oil and gas producers boost production and win public support isn’t the same as saving the planet, van Lierop argued the results are no less worthwhile: “It’s a very important goal to ensure that you clean up traditional energy sources.”

Fossil fuels not going anywhere

The oil and gas industry is here to stay for a very long long time. Strong federal support for oil and gas exploration — part of President Obama’s “all of the above energy strategy” — continues to protect entrenched energy players and allows oil and gas companies to continue their grip on transportation and electricity generation. These companies operate at such a massive scale that it’s hard to a tiny startup to compete with them.

Fossil fuel companies are partly investing in renewable energy sources as a defensive move. It’s a hedge against any quick change in government policy and public sentiment. Chevron made some small investments in renewable energy technologies, and probably was glad it didn’t invest more when it realized later that its investments weren’t as lucrative as it had expected. The growth of the biofuel business, in particular, will require the support of major oil industry players.

Some venture capital investors maintain that cleantech investing is still a financially viable option — that a cleantech 2.0 investing wave will come some day in the future. But for now, in a year when “cleantech” has become a dirty word, it makes sense for cleantech companies to go make friends with the dirty fossil fuel industry.

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Norway, known for breathtaking glacier-carved valleys, fjords and abundant hydropower, is also increasingly the home to green data centers that can use the cold air (and water) for cooling, and clean power for electricity. And now a two-year-old Norwegian startup called Fjord IT is counting on the country’s natural environment to help it attract customers to its green data center services, including cloud computing and cloud-based storage.

Fjord IT has opened up its first data center space, which is a 1,000 square meters (3,280 square feet) pilot project, at the Hogas Industrial Park in Oslo. The space is filled with its efficient cooling technology and is also powered by cheap hydropower, which has a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuel-based power. Those attributes could make its IT services appealing to environmentally-minded businesses as well as businesses in countries that have renewable energy and emission-reduction goals.

Gallefoss says the company has lined up its first customer in its Oslo space — business software service provider 24SevenOffice — and plans to open another data center space in Notodden, west of Oslo, this summer. The company is hoping to line up $10 million in a second round of funding this year, following a first round of $2.5 million from investors in Europe and Hong Kong.

Gallefoss didn’t want to talk about the cooling technology because he said the company is still applying for patents, but described it as a passive cooling technology that makes use of the cold outside air to maintain a constant temperature indoor. The average temperature of Norway is 7 degrees Celsius (about 45 degrees Fahrenheit). Google and Facebook are using this type of cooling for their data centers in that region of the world, too.

Fjord IT can keep its operational cost down with the help of the abundant hydropower in Norway, Gallefoss said. Hydropower accounted for about 95 percent of the electricity Norway generated in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency. Retail prices for electricity range from $0.05-$0.10 per kilowatt hour, Gallefoss said.

Hydropower, being renewable and doesn’t spew pollution into the atmosphere, has become popular for data center operators who want a cheaper, cleaner source of electricity. France-based Internet service provider OVH.com recently opened a data center in Canada that runs on hydropower.

Iceland also appeals to data center operators for similar reasons. Verne Global has set up a data center in Iceland, and Greenqloud has been selling IT services out of data centers in the country, which runs on hydropower and geothermal electricity.

Gallefoss said its first data center space can achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3 while the second one is expected to get PUE 1.05. PUE is a ratio of the power used to run a data center’s IT and servers versus the power for running the entire data center. The measurement is one of the more common metrics for determining a data center’s energy efficiency.

Germany is the big target market for Fjord IT because the country is keen on reducing its carbon emissions, but for the German market, Fjord IT plans to be a wholesale service provider and rely on its German customers to sell its service. Germany also is the largest solar energy market in the world thanks to government subsidies that pay solar power project owners a premium for the electricity.

Europe, overall, has set 2020 goals for reducing emissions and making use of energy more efficiently. The European Commission is pleased with the progress it’s making with reducing emissions but not so much with achieving the energy efficiency goal. As a result, it’s keenly interested in IT technology that will help it meet that goal, including the operation of more energy efficient data centers.

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Suntech Power, once the world’s largest solar panel maker, is in need of a rescue. The company sought to change the reputation of Chinese solar manufacturers, which are often seen as uninnovative, and was one of the rare firms that opened up a U.S. factory when many of its peers were waiting and watching to see how the market for solar panels would unfold.

Now the company seems to be on its way to becoming the biggest casualty yet of a shakeup of the global solar industry and its own financial oversight problems. Suntech reportedly is running out of cash and could be taken over by the government of the city in which it’s headquartered, said the New York Times on Wednesday. The takeover possibility was reported by the China Business Journal earlier this week. The company has declined to comment.

What’s next?

The fact that Suntech is teetering financially has been well documented in recent months. The big question is what will become of a company and the impacts of its decline? In the near term, the support from the Wuxi government will keep Suntech afloat and at least part of its large workforce employed. Long term, the chances of the company’s survival are low if it remains under government control. A sale of Suntech’s intellectual property and manufacturing assets is likely.

Suntech can’t afford to take a long pause to right itself when its competitors are fighting more fiercely than ever to keep their footing in a market that has seen an oversupply of solar panels and plummeting prices for them for over two years. That has led to dozens of solar manufacturers worldwide — from stalwarts such as Q-Cells in Germany to American startups such as Solyndra and Abound Solar, to file for bankruptcy. The large Chinese solar manufacturers, who rose to prominence over the past five years thanks largely to strong support from state-owned banks, have been posting losses for many quarters.

But the fact that Suntech’s woes partly come from a financial scandal means it could be less likely to get a greater government bailout. The Chinese national government has been working on building a domestic market for its solar equipment makers while figuring out which companies to support and which companies should consolidate because there are just too many players. In fact, the government said publicly last year that it was promoting mergers and acquisitions of solar companies and planning to prohibit local governments from helping struggling solar companies.

Suntech got in trouble with a fund it controlled that financed solar power plant development in Europe. The company announced last summer that an internal investigation revealed that the Global Solar Fund used faked German bonds to guarantee the funding that Suntech secured for GSF. The fund also came under legal scrutiny in Italy when a criminal investigation alleged that the fund built projects illegally to take advantage of lucrative government subsidies for solar electricity generation.

Those fake bonds have made it difficult for Suntech to pay over $541 million to holders of its convertible bonds. Last week announced a settlement with Global Solar Fund and its top executive. Earlier this week, The company said it managed to get most of its note holders to agree to give the company more time. The company replaced its founder, Zhengrong Shi, as CEO last year and recently forced him out as chairman. Shi is fighting with Suntech over his ouster.

Implications in the U.S.

The drama presents an ugly turn for a company that was solid and took technology and market risks to grow. Suntech invested heavily on research and development of new technology and received glowing media coverage for its effort, including recognition in the Technology Review. Chinese companies in general had been known more as mass producers rather than innovators.

Suntech’s decline also leaves a depressing note in the efforts by the federal and local governments to expand solar manufacturing in the U.S.

Suntech opened a factory in Arizona in 2010 to assemble the cells from its factories in China into panels. The factory opened to much fanfare because optimism ran high then about rebuilding a solar manufacturing sector in the U.S. With the stimulus package, the federal government was approving billions of dollars in loans and guarantees to help U.S. solar manufactures to build factories domestically.

That effort hasn’t been successful so far, however, in light of the bankruptcy of Solyndra in 2011 and Abound Solar in 2012. It’s achieved better results promoting the installation of solar power plants and rooftop systems at homes and businesses.

Suntech scaled back its production at the Arizona factory and yesterday announced its plan to shutter it on April 3. Its demise will not make the U.S. a more attractive place to set up production. That’s a sentiment that will be hard to change.

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Europe’s policy makers face a dilemma. They have to collectively cut energy consumption across the continent by 2020, yet the various industries that need to reduce wasteful consumption significantly, from IT to transportation, aren’t doing enough. Part of the challenge includes figuring out the best ways to build and run data centers.

“I don’t want to say this, but … we are panicking a bit,” said Colette Maloney, head of European Commission’s smart cities and sustainability unit, during the Green Grid Forum in Santa Clara, Calif., on Wednesday. “We are way off target.” The commission aims to see its member countries cut their energy use by 20 percent — compared to the 2005 levels — by 2020, and the European Union has only hit a 13 percent reduction.

To meet its 2020 target, the commission is counting on the information and communication technology industry to do its part, and is focusing attention on data centers in particular, given that data centers account for about 25 to 30 percent of the energy use by the IT industry, Maloney said.

Not only that, the number of data centers will likely mushroom if the idea of “smart cities” becomes a reality. The term is really about the use of technology to help people use and manage resources – from water and power to transportation and communication systems – much more efficiently (see  this GigaOm Pro report, subscription required, called “Key technologies for the future of the smart city”). Using sensors to collect data and computers to analyze and disseminate them will be a big part of running a smart city, and that will require the construction of more data centers.

Figuring out how to measure and analyze energy savings and what data is acceptable to use for those calculations are among the big challenges for making data centers more efficient, Maloney said. And getting at least the majority of the IT industry to agree to a set of methods and data won’t be easy. The commission has been working with many companies and trade associations, but they haven’t reached a happy compromise yet. Implementing those standards once they are set will pose a new challenge, she noted.

Some of the standard-setting industry organizations are looking to adopt rules for promoting energy savings. The Green Grid, an IT industry association, came up with PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) to gauge the energy efficiency of data centers. Companies such as Google have promoted the use of PUE, which has some notable limitations.­­ EBay has a new metric for the MPG of a data center, too.

Maloney said PUE is useful, but the commission is looking at other metrics as well, especially since it wants to promote new business opportunities while achieving its energy savings target. Some of the opportunities it hopes to promote will involve making and selling efficient equipment and related services, but what constitutes green products and services has yet to be clearly defined.

In the mean time, the commission is funding research projects, such as Fit4Green and All4Green, that will come up with new ways to run data centers more efficiently. Later this year, the commission plans to call for research proposals on building and running green data centers in smart cities, Maloney said.

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Google has long pushed the envelope of data center infrastructure design, particularly when it comes to renewable energy, efficient cooling, new power electronics and innovative building layouts. And according to Joe Kava, vice president of Google’s data centers, Google’s data center strategy roughly follows Google’s original ten core defining principles that Google’s founders wrote out when the company was still very young.

Kava laid out these tenants, and connected them to Google’s data center design strategy, during the Green Grid Forum in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday:

1). Focus on the users and all else will follow: Google’s audience is global, so it’s not surprising that the search giant is looking to build data centers across the globe to serve different regions of the world. By placing servers as close to users as possible, Google cuts down on the time it takes for users to use its tools and do search queries. Kava said Google processes 1 billion search queries across its global users per month. Picking locations, and constructing data centers, is ultimately a UX issue for Google.

2). It’s best to do one thing really, really well: Google by some guesses has built as many as 40 data centers, so it’s safe to say that Google has the process of finding a location and building a facility down pat. Over the years, the company has included in its criteria things like finding a good local workforce, and accessing a robust electric grid as key qualifications. More recently, Google has increased the importance of greener issues like finding a location where the utility offers a significant amount of renewable energy.

3). You can be serious without a suit: Even though Google doesn’t care about how data centers look from the outside, it aims to bring a piece of the alternative Google culture from its HQ to its server farms. Kava showed a slide of a colorful recreation room at a data center to emphasize the company’s “work hard, play hard” philosophy.

4). The need for information crosses all borders: This philosophy relates to at least two aspects of Google’s data center operations. First the move to putting data in the cloud makes it easier for users to access data wherever they are. Second, Google is looking to be transparent about the metrics for its data centers. Given the importance of energy in designing and running data centers, Google has opted to make public some of its internal energy consumption data.

5). You don’t need to be at your desk to get answers: Google searches for interesting and unusual solutions for some its data centers across the globe, and far outside of its Silicon Valley roots. For example, Kava highlighted its data center in Finland that uses the cold outside air and sea water to cool its servers. The data center is inside a former paper mill, and Kava noted that Google has re-used pumps and other electrical equipment from the mill to operate its servers. It’s a highly unique design and one of the only ones like it in the world.

6). Faster is better than slow: In Google’s philosophy, the term efficiency doesn’t just refer to how Google wants to use electricity to power servers. How quickly Google designs and builds data centers is equally important, Kava said. He pointed to a data center in Georgia that took 16 months rather than 2-3 years as an example of how the company has created a set of standards for designing and building data centers.

7). Great is just isn’t good enough: This rule has to do with setting higher goals, and Kava used it to describe how Google also allows room for customizing data center designs to make better use of local resources. For example, the company relies on the cold outside air instead of a chiller to cool its data center in Dublin, Ireland.

8). There is always more information out there: Google is currently on the fifth generation of its data center designs, but Google still continues to learn and improve its process. Sometimes that means that Google has to learn techniques and skills outside of its core competency. The need to cool servers and reduce wasteful energy consumption has forced Google to develop an expertise in designing systems to transfer and use energy more efficiently. In addition, to make the most use of the indoor space of its data centers, Google has designed the layout of its servers to maximize the effectiveness of cooling systems.

9). You can make money without doing evil: Reusing waste water is a good example of something that Google can do for both economic and eco reasons. In Belgium, Google has built its water treatment plant to take water from a canal nearby suitable for industrial use. The company also uses treated wastewater for its data center in Georgia.

10. Democracy on the web works: O.K. this one is a bit of a stretch. Yes, democracy does work, indeed, Kava said, but it’s hard to draw a connection between this last rule and Google’s data centers.

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One of the important ways to make solar energy cheaper is to improve the amount of sunlight that solar cells can convert into electricity. So it’s a big deal to see that First Solar announced on Tuesday that it’s managed to create a record 18.7 percent solar cell, up from the 17.3 percent cell it touted in July 2011.

That 18.7 percent sets a new world record for cells made from the material cadmium-telluride. It represents the best the company could achieve, but to make cells with that efficiency in mass production will likely take a few years.

Boosting the efficiency helps to reduce production costs of solar cells. Efficiency is correlated with how much power a panel of a given size can produce – more power means higher efficiencies. There is a fixed cost and amount of time for making each panel. If the company produces each panel with a higher power rating (in watts) for the same amount of time as it did before, then that panel’s cost-per-watt is lower.

For consumers, a solar panel with more efficient cells also means they won’t need as many solar panels to get the same amount of electricity. Or they could get more solar electricity with the same number of panels. That’s good news for those who have homes with a limited roof space or want to rely less on their utilities for power.

The Arizona company has long built its reputation as a low-cost manufacturer, but it has faced increasing competition from companies that have gotten better at reducing costs. Like First Solar, many of these rivals have built mega factories and developed their own or licensed technologies to cut costs.

A good number of these solar cell makers are based in China, and in recent years these Chinese companies also have gotten strong financial support from their national and local governments — as well as state-controlled banks — to become formidable players. But that help has gotten the Chinese manufacturers in trouble in the U.S. and Europe, where trade complaints have been filed to stop what their rivals say is unfair competition. The U.S. government started to impose tariffs on imported Chinese silicon solar cells last year after investigating such a trade dispute in 2011-2012.

With the new efficiency record, First Solar also wants to show that its material of choice, cadmium-telluride, is capable of squeezing more and more electricity from sunlight for years to come. Most of the solar cells made today actually use silicon, the same material for chips that run computers and mobile phones. But there has been a long-standing debate over when silicon and cadmium-telluride will be close to hitting the maximum efficiencies the materials can inherently produce.

Without switching to a new material — and spending lots of money to replace factory equipment — solar companies are looking at different ways to boost the efficiencies. One idea is to stack another layer of cells on top of the existing layer to induce chemical reactions that help to minimize the loss of electrons in the process of converting sunlight to energy. Figuring out new ways to boost silicon solar cell efficiency is one area where startups might still be able to attract venture capital, especially if the ideas involve licensing the technologies to big producers.

Many investors have shied away from putting money in startups that want to build factories to manufacture the technologies they have developed. Solar manufacturing technology has shown to take a lot more time and money to commercialize than some VCs have the appetite for, and investors haven’t seen enough success stories to want to place more bets.

When solar cells are assembled into a panel, the efficiency of the entire panel is typically a few percentage points lower than the cell efficiency. First Solar announced a 14.4 percent panel efficiency record about a year ago. But the panels that are rolling off its production lines en masse clocked in at an average of 12.9 percent as of the end of 2012, up 0.7 percentage point from 12.2 percent by the end of 2011.

The company also reported its fourth-quarter financial results on Tuesday. It posted $1.1 billion in sales for the quarter, up from $415 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. It generated $154.2 million in the quarterly net income, or $1.74 per share, compared with a net loss of $413.1 million, or $4.78 per share, from the year-ago period. For the entire 2012, First Solar took in $3.4 billion in sales, up 22 percent from 2011, but it recorded a net loss of $96.3 million, or $1.11 per share, for 2011.

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The digital lighting industry is in a quandary. Prices for LED lights are falling quickly, making the technology more compelling to customers, particularly owners of office buildings and warehouses. But the price decline has come at the expense of manufacturers who have over built production capacity and now need to idle some of their equipment.

This imbalance of supply and demand is also happening at a time when market researchers are expecting growth for the LED market to slow in the next several years. Our new report on the LED lighting sector on GigaOm Pro (subscription required) focuses on the latest LED technology, new applications, and the role that LEDs are playing in the increasingly digitized home.

While LED lighting isn’t widely used in homes yet, the technology isn’t new. LEDs are commonly used for indicator and traffic lights. But improving the technology so that it can radiate the same intensity, warmth and even distribution as incumbent incandescent and fluorescent lighting continue to be a challenge.

Already, the making of the diodes themselves is cornered by rivals with large factories. Eleven companies control over 70 percent of the market for LEDs packaged to be turned into bulbs and fixtures. That makes it more difficult for startups to fight for market shares against the likes of Philips, Samsung, Cree and Osram Opto Semiconductors. Many of the large LED manufacturers also design and make their own LED bulbs and lighting systems.

Meanwhile, venture capitalists in recent years have shied away from investing in manufacturing technologies. Manufacturing technologies often take a lot longer to scale and more money than expected to reach the market. Even when they do, many forces — from strong competition to changes in public incentives that have driven clean tech’s growth — have gutted the ambitions of new entrants who thought their technology breakthroughs would naturally lead to high customer demand and profits.

What will be interesting to watch are new business models that go beyond just the sales of LEDs and their bulbs and fixtures. LEDs share a similar DNA as other semiconductor-based technologies, from sensors to wireless networking. Marrying lighting with these technologies can deliver uses in sectors from farming to location-based services. LED lighting, in effect, will serve multiple functions and occupy a spot in the widening web of Internet-dependent goods and services.

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