In a long-awaited announcement, Advent Solar today put out the news that they have raised a $30M Series C round. Battery Ventures led the round with fellow new investor Firelake Capital, and existing investors EnerTech Capital Partners, CMGI's @Ventures, the New Mexico Co-Investment Partners, and Angels with Attitudes also participated.

The capital is going to be used to build a 25MW manufacturing plant for the company's emitter wrap-around solar modules. Want to see a close-up picture of one? Steve Jurvetson has posted a picture on his Flickr account. He has posted a lot of other interesting pictures as well... DFJ, of course, has invested in Konarka, another high-profile solar startup.

The Advent raise follows on the heels of the other major solar fundings this year, and is in advance of the announced IPO of SunPower. Certainly, solar is getting the most attention right now among the many cleantech investment areas.

[Update: this is a guestblog entry by Kjartan (it's nice to be back), sorry for not mentioning this in the original post...]

I had the pleasure of hearing San Francisco Mayor Newsom speak today at a luncheon. Mayor Newsom is a very skilled public speaker and always entertaining.

In addition to other good topics such as homelessness and hotel strikes, he reiterated the city'?s Cleantech initiative, which if you missed it, Joel Makower has already summarized nicely here.

For Cleantech investors this is interesting on a couple of levels: The initiative stands alongside three others, namely Biotech, LifeSciences, and Nanotech -- clearly the Mayor believes Cleantech as an investment area will continue to grow significantly in coming years. Also, will this help incentivize entrepreneurs to locate or re-locate to San Francisco? There are good arguments why it should: It's a great town; Good eats; Easy access to VC's; 10 year payroll tax credit for qualifying Cleantech businesses; etc. On the flip side: Prohibitively high cost of living.

In our outsourced world, the Mayor realizes that the city will never compete with low cost manufacturing jobs, and thus seeks to attract talent and creativity through initiatives such as this. Stay tuned.

HydroPoint Data Systems, which sells remote-controlled, weather-activated irrigation systems that promote water efficiency, announced a $5M raise led by existing funder Monitor Ventures, also including Toro, Shea Ventures, Firelake Strategic Technology Fund, and Scenic Ventures. A pdf of the press release is available here.

Nanotech developer Nanosys, which has offerings across a number of industries including several cleantech applications, announced a $40M raise today. El Dorado Ventures led the round, which also included new investors Masters Capital, Medtronic, and Wasatch Advisors, as well as previous investors Alexandria Equities, ARCH Venture Partners, CDIB BioScience Ventures, CW Group, Harris & Harris Group Inc., In-Q-Tel, Intel Capital, H.B. Fuller Company, Lux Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, Prospect Venture Partners, UOB Hermes Asia Technology Fund, Venrock Associates, and others.

This brings the total amount of capital raised by the Palo Alto-based company to almost $100M so far.

[11/10 update: This article has more interesting details]

It's been a big day for energy storage/ portable power.

Motorola Ventures announced today that they have made a strategic investment in Tekion, which is developing micro fuel cells for battery replacement in devices like PCs and cell phones. Tekion claims to be pursuing a "fuel cell on a chip". Terms and amount of investment were not discussed in the announcement.

Israel-based Power Paper, which is developing thin, flexible micro-batteries, announced a $30M round. The company's products are used in RFID, as well as in some cosmetics applications. The round was led by Apax Partners, which put in $16M, and included Clal Industries and Investments and the Infinity Venture Capital Fund ($12M total between the two), as well as existing investor BancAmerica Capital Partners ($2M). Existing funders included Amadeus Capital Partners (UK), PolyTechnos (Germany), the Millenium Fund (Israel), Yasuda Enterprise Development (Japan), EDB (Singapore), and Toppan Forms (Japan). Total investments to date are almost $60M.

Lilliputian Systems, which is developing fuel cells as battery replacement for portable devices, has reportedly raised a $30M round of financing, which would bring total investment so far to $40M. Investors include Atlas Venture, Kleiner Perkins, and cleantech-focused Rockport Capital Partners.