Will NRG Energy be the next ten ton gorilla in solar leases?

NRG Energy, one of the most aggressive power companies to invest in solar projects, is considering getting into offering leases for solar panel roof systems for home owners and businesses. NRG Energy's CEO David Crane tells Bloomberg that it is something that they're "looking at in a very serious way," and NRG Solar's CEO Tom Doyle told me last month that the company has been inreasingly talking about financing options for solar roofs and in part ...

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/25/will-nrg-energy-be-the-next-ten-ton-goril

Raspberry Pi's Momentum Picks Up, and Google Pitches In

As we've reported, the diminutive $25/$35 Linux computer dubbed Raspberry Pi is emerging as one of the biggest open source stories of this year. It's attracted all kinds of developers and tinkerers, is now running many different flavors of Linux, and there is even now a supercomputer consisting of many Pi devices lashed together with Lego pieces (see the photo).

The education market has always represented a natural fit for Raspberry Pi devices, and this week news arrives that Google is giving 15,000 Pi devices to U.K. schools. That's just some of the Pi news arriving in the last few days.

The news about Google's gift to schools was even picked up on the TreeHugger blog, which noted:

"Though some question the gift from Google, noting that the influence of big corporations should be kept out of the classroom, others note how important it is to get kids interested in computer science so that gains in the sector do not falter with the next generation."

Actually, Google's Eric Schmidt began talking about pledging Pi devices to U.K. schools all the way back in May of last year, as we reported here. "Rebooting computer science education is not straightforward," Schmidt said at the time at an event in London, according to the BBC. "Scrapping the existing curriculum was a good first step - the equivalent of pulling the plug out of the wall. The question is now how to power up."

The New York Times also ran an exhaustive retrospective on the rapid rise of the Raspberry Pi this week. "The Raspberry Pi Foundation began selling the computers in February of last year," the Times noted. "They soon could not keep them in stock."

Who would have thought that a credit card-sized device running Linux and available for nearly no money would have such a profound impact? The Raspberry Pi story is actually only beginning.

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http://ostatic.com/blog/raspberry-pis-momentum-picks-up-and-google-pit

Why crowd funding could disrupt how solar power is created

If you're an avid Kickstarter backer, or even have seen Kickstarter's latest 2012 stats, then you're well-versed in the power of crowd-funding. Kickstarter recently said that 10 percent of the films at Sundance are Kickstarter-funded, and in 2012 over 2 million people pledged close to $320 million to successfully fund over 18,000 Kickstarter projects on the site. Can clean power projects - like solar panel rooftop installations and even wind farm ...

http://gigaom.com/2013/01/11/why-crowd-funding-could-disrupt-how-solar

Google invests $200M in Texas wind farm, backed a Hoover Dam worth of clean power

Google has now invested over $1 billion into about 2 GW - or the capacity of the Hoover Dam - worth of clean power projects. The latest investment, which the search giant announced on Wednesday, is a $200 million equity stake in a large wind farm in Texas. The 161 MW wind farm, called the Spinning Spur Wind Project, has a capacity to power about 60,000 U.S homes, and is located in Oldham County, Texas. The project is being built by EDF Renewable ...

http://gigaom.com/2013/01/09/google-invests-200m-in-texas-wind-farm-no

Energy innovation rockstar, former ARPA-E Director, to join Google.org

The former Director of the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program, Arun Majumdar, will be joining Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Majumdar will "drive Google.org's energy initiatives and advise the company on our broader energy strategy," Google said Monday.

The announcement is interesting for at least two reasons. About a year ago Google announced that it would be shutting down its clean power research projects through Google.org, called RE<C. I didn't think it was all that big of a deal at the time, given Google has invested close to a billion dollars into clean power projects, but the move was widely seen as Google cutting some philanthropic research that was outside of its basic territory.

But with Majumdar joining Google.org, clearly Google will be launching some new projects, or investing some new resources, into energy innovation and research. That's exciting. Despite the fact that Google is not an energy company, it has been one of the bright spots in the private sector by funding new energy technologies through investment in startups, through brainstorming ways to buy clean power to run its data centers, and by being a test case for new energy technologies like Bloom Energy's fuel cells.

Majumdar oversaw the DOE's ARPA-E program, which puts small grants - from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars - into early stage, "moonshot" research that could deliver a breakthrough, but is too early for private investment. The ARPA-E program has been one of the most successful and least controversial projects under the DOE and has delivered dozens of projects that have found follow-on private financing.

It's also worth noting that Majumdar will now be joining the private sector, so will be able to use Google's balance sheet to fund energy innovation. ARPA-E's budget ever year is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Majumdar hails from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the University of California at Berkeley.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/energy-innovation-rockstar-former-arpa-e-d