Greentech Media hosted an enormously successful all-day seminar on Concentrated Solar Power Markets and Technologies yesterday at Intersolar in San Francisco. Daniel Englander reported on it here. Over 300 people attended the seminar. But as informative and compelling as the speakers were at the podium and on the panels – sometimes the more interesting conversations occur in the hallways and at the lunch tables. Here are some random tidbits:

• Ausra’s EVP, Robert Morgan, let it be known that the company will be closing a $50 million round C this quarter for its linear fresnel reflector-based thermal solar systems. Previous investors in Ausra include Khosla Ventures and KPCB.

• Miasole’s rumored huge funding round is still in the works. Morgan Stanley, many of their existing investors, and some new investors are involved in the reputed $200 million investment at a greater than $1 billion valuation.

• Miasole has joined Solyndra in the $1 billion valuation with a zero dollar revenue club. Solyndra is a secretive CIGS manufacturer with several hundred employees at a presumptive massive burn-rate. The Prometheus Institute groups Solyndra in the low-concentration PV category in the institute’s CSP research. Solyndra has raised massive amounts of capital based on the bright promise of its technology. According to a lawyer colleague at a Silicon Valley law firm – Solyndra had even started doing some IPO paperwork earlier this year.

• John Woolard, Bright Source Energy’s CEO, has steered his Heliostat-based power tower CSP company to big funding and to major megawatt contracts with PG&E. Despite the massive scale and technology in his firm, Mr. Woolard recommends “painting your roof white and your water heater blackâ€? as a real contribution to energy conservation.

• Solar Junction is another secretive solar firm involved in CPV. NEA is an investor as evidenced here and here. The pugnaciously non-communicative trio of Solar Junction staffers (including CEO Jim Weldon and VP Craig Stauffer) confirmed that their funding was “north of $3 million,â€? their goal is very high efficiency triple junction cells for CPV systems, and that the “secret is in the EPI.â€?

More to come…

Fisker Automotive, a start-up that hopes to sell luxury hybrid cars, has lined up a manufacturing partner in an effort to get its cars out by the fourth quarter of next year. Valmet Automotive, a Finnish manufacturer, will build the Fisker Karma for the company. Valmet also makes the Cayman and Boxster for Porsche. This being an international deal, the Finnish Valmet will make the cars in its Austria facilities. The Karma, Fisker says, will be an $80,000 four-door luxury hybrid car. Like a Toyota Prius, it will have two engines: a gas one and an electric one. But unlike a Prius or other hybrids now on sale, the Karma will be a serial hybrid. The electric engine will drive the car and the gas engine will exist to recharge the battery. Serial hybrids, say advocates, can be produced for less than all-electric cars and go much further before conking out. The Tesla Roadster, for instance, can go a little under 250 miles on a charge. The Karma and Chevy Volt, another coming serial hybrid, will go more than twice that far. Batteries are one of the most expensive components in an electric or hybrid car, and a serial can get by on a smaller battery pack. Both General Motors and Tesla have serial hybrids in the works. GM, however, won't get the Volt out until 2010. Tesla, meanwhile, won't get out the Model S, which will come out in an all-electric and serial form, until late 2010 and the all-electric version will come out first. Tesla had been aiming for 2009, but delayed it because of earlier delays with the Roadster. (Tesla sort of slipped in the delay part amid the hoopla of announcing a new factory in California.) At the California event a few weeks ago, Tesla said that they had eliminated some of the remaining manufacturing kinks and were getting more cars out of the factory. The company was stuck at less than one a week for a few months. Thus, Fisker might be first to market. It has backing from prominent VCs and now a manufacturing partner. Founder Hendrik Fisker also has years of experience in designing cars. But getting one out on time isn't easy. So we shall see.