These are the types of panels that you might see on the back of cell phones, for example. Light and thin equals much broader uses for the cells, which means more potential energy produced from the sun.

Most people know GE for light bulbs, but they are much more than that. “Over the last decade, through technology investment, GE has become one of the world’s major wind turbine manufacturers, and our investment in high-tech solar products will help us continue to grow our position in the renewable energy industry,” said Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy business.

In other solar news, Google has invested roughly $5 million in a German 18.7-megawatt solar power plant. It is Google’s first investment in clean technology outside of the United States.

The solar power plant occupies around 116 acres and can generate enough power for around 5,000 homes. More than 70 percent of the panels installed at the plant are manufactured in Germany.

Hat tip to Green Tech Media and Venture Beat’s Green Beat that do great jobs on the money that flows into the space.

Cleantech saw $7.8 Billion in 2010 (the most post-credit bubble), but that was somewhat tempered with slower third and fourth quarters.

“Venture funds are still in a cautious place” as they continue to try to raise money for their own funds, said Sheerez Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group. That makes it hard for early-stage startups, as investors look for later-stage companies where “the technology risk has been taken care of,” he said.

Greentech mentions that December was a big month, however. There were more than 40 solar, smart grid, efficiency, lighting, biofuels, wind and recycling firms that raised more than $700M in VC in December.

A couple of interesting other highlights:

++ OPower, the home energy-efficiency startup, closed on their round C with $50 million led by two of Silicon Valley’s premier VC firms — Kleiner Perkins and Accel Partners, along with New Enterprise Associates. OPower is focused on customer engagement and behavior modification, and is currently providing tens of thousands of homes with in-home energy data and efficiency advice via paper reports or online. The platform is described as advanced customer engagement.

They got a visit from Obama earlier this year with respect to clean jobs.

More on OPower’s $50M raise here.

See our earlier discussion using energy data to curb usage behavior: New Electric Bill could Drive Better Usage

++ Energy efficiency continues to be the hottest segment with 7 deals for $162 million in the fourth quarter per E&Y.

++ Solar saw $150 million in 10 deals.

Ernst & Young itself seems bullish on cleantech’s future. “This quarter reflects the ongoing volatility in cleantech investment that we have observed over the past two years, depending on the presence of the very large transactions we see in cleantech,” said Jay Spencer, Ernst & Young’s Americas cleantech director, in a company statement. “However, a number [of] factors point to the continuing strength in the U.S. cleantech sector, including growth in energy efficiency investments and corporate involvement throughout multiple industries — from utilities to technology to consumer products.”

Don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @greensquaredcom.

According to this Reuters article, NRG Solar as they are known, has also invested in the following solar projects recently:

+ BrightSource Energy’s 392-megawatt solar thermal Ivanpah project in the Mojave Desert of California
+ 21-megawatt project in California from First Solar
+ Partnered with Euru Energy America to build three power projects totaling 45 megawatts in California.
+ NRG said it was buying nine projects under development in California and Arizona from U.S. Solar.

According to this article, the investment will cost about $4.6 million.

That investment will generate $684,000 in revenue annually according to Ikea estimates, based primarily on the 71.3 cents a kilowatt hour feed-in tariff.

That is a good news-bad news scenario in my opinion. This solar investment has a very good simple payback of 6.72 years. The bad news is that without the feed-in tariff that this same investment would provide a 60-year payback.

Photo credit:COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

As we mentioned last week here, there are already 1.7 million smart meters deployed in Texas, and 6 million will be deployed by 2013. This article from the Financial Post notes that about 76 million smart meters have been installed around the world and that number is expected to more than double by 2013.

What are Smart Meters?

Smart meters pinpoint and record how much and when electricity is used — typically on an hourly basis — and automatically transmit that information to the utility via a two-way communications network. Whereas, conventional electricity meters measure the only total amount of electricity used over a specified billing period.

Picture: Wikipedia

Here’s a quick run-down of several energy-efficient projects cited in the article.

Projects at Fairmont Waterfront hotel include a heat-recovery system to preheat incoming city water using heat captured from the hotel’s water system. It saves an estimated 305,380 kilowatt-hours (1,100 GJ) per year and $12,000 per year. Estimated payback is in two years.

In a separate article, Fairmont set a corporate commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent from its 2006 levels by 2013.

The conference was opened by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, C. Donald Babers, Regional Administrator for Region VI, U.S. HUD and Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman.

Smitherman provided some interesting Texas/ERCOT stats:

+ 1.7 million smart meters are installed as of July 31
+ 6 million will be installed by 2013
+ 9300 megawatts from wind in ERCOT footprint (900 MW more in Texas but out of ERCOT footprint)
+ 18,500 megawatts from wind in ERCOT planned by 2013 (that would be 20-25% of load)
+ There is a proposed rule for NON-WIND renewable target of 500 MW (most likely, solar)

From Dub Taylor of the State Energy Conservation Office, he provided this data of the fuel mix in Electricity in Texas for 2009:
+ Natural Gas 51%
+ Coal 34%
+ Nuclear 10%
+ Renewables (basically wind) 4%

One of the highlights of the conference, of which there were many, was the presentation by the new City of Houston Sustainablity Director, Laura Spanjian (we touched on Spanjian earlier this month on this blog here), summarizing the Houston’s achievements in sustainable growth. In March of this year the City of Houston was recognized for being ranked sixth on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 list of cities with the most energy efficient buildings.

Ms. Spanjian woke the crowd up after lunch with an inspired delivery of City of Houston accomplishments.

Solar and Wind initiatives include: A 100KW solar system at George R. Brown Convention Center funded jointly by the Houston Endowment ($850k), BP ($100k) and CenterPoint ($50k) and the purchase of 2 billion kwh (50 MW of power) from Texas Wind Farms over the next 5 years. The EPA ranks the City of Houston as the #1 in terms of renewable energy purchased by a municipality.

Other energy efficiency initiatives include the LED traffic lights at 2,000 intersections which have a cost savings of $3.6M per year, the LED Streetlight Pilot Project which are up to 50% more energy efficient and 755 hybrid vehicles (the 3rd largest municipal fleet in the country). It should also be noted METRO is purchasing is purchasing 100 hybrid buses a year and will have 449 in total by 2011.

Houston is “LEED”ing the way for all new construction, as mandated in 2004, and the Looscan Library was the City’s first LEED Certified building with a LEED Gold on Central Permitting Center and Fire Station 90 not far behind. Add to all of this the Residential Program for kWh reductions, the Weatherization Program, improving air quality using MAAM and DIAL technologies and Houston is well on its way to leading the nation in energy strategies.

We applaud the new Mayor Parker and her selection of Laura Spanjian as Sustainability Director.

It was a great presentation!

By the way, the event was held at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on UT’s campus. The facility is LEED Gold.

And if it makes it into a paper like the USA Today, it is certainly mainstream.

What are solar carports?

Take typical surface parking lots — like ones you see in strip malls and many office buildings and apartment complexes — and add carports with solar panels as the roof.

You get covered parking for customers and tenants (you normally pay extra in apartments and office buildings for covered parking).

And the space becomes an alternative source of energy.

Here’s a picture from the Dell Computer campus in Round Rock, Texas.

We have been discussing these types of arrangements with several companies recently, so I am starting to think they are starting to take off in terms of acceptance.

The installations were to be performed by a company call SunRun. On Tuesday, June 29th, SunRun announced it closed a Series C round of funding for $55 million led by Sequoia Capital and joined by existing investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital.

For those of you not wise to the VC world, Sequoia is the biggest and baddest Silicon Valley VC that there is. You may have heard of prior early stage investments like Google, YouTube, Apple, Yahoo!, and Cisco, among others.

Original investor, Accel Partners, is bigtime too with investments in Facebook, Veritas, and comscore.

Similarly, a recent report from Matter Network states that Goldman Sachs has begun covering the solar sector, including First Solar and SunPower.

We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about green investment, so if you’d like read more here.

The fund, managed by a P.G.&E. subsidiary, Pacific Energy Capital II, is the largest single solar leasing pool to date, according to the company, and marks the growing interest of utilities in the renewable energy financing business.

The $100 million in financing is expected to fund solar installations for 3,500 homes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

I’m curious when funds like this will be created for Energy Efficiency projects. A solar kilowatt is just as effective as saving a carbon based kilowatt, so when will the smart money start to catch on?