Sweden's Chemrec has received $20 million in a third round of financing to help it commercialize its technology for turning "black liquor" into a fuel. VantagePoint Venture Partners led the round. (Volvo is also an investor.) No, it's not from the Beverly Hillbillies. Black liquor is a liquid biomass produced in pulp and paper processing. A paper mill might produce thousands of tons of this stuff a day. Most mills burn it to power their own machinery. Chemrec has come up with a way to efficiently gasify it (i.e., turn it into a vapor) before converting it into motor fuels. The process can also be used to produce electric power. There's enough black liquor in the world to produce 45 billion liters of fuel a year, or enough to displace 2 percent of the global fuel demand. Humans have burnt biomass for centuries to heat homes and cook food, but the process is increasingly going high tech. Along with Chemrec, keep your eye of Ze-Gen, which dips biomass into vats of hot, liquid iron. The reaction produces hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is then used to crank turbines. The deal also underscores the ever-growing greentech activity in Scandanavia. Environmental regulations, high fuel prices, cold temperatures, high winds and lots and lots of trees have effectively made Denmark, Finland and Sweden some of Europe's bigger consumers and producers of wind turbines and other green technologies.

Shell has drilled an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico that's 1.77 miles deep and it will follow up with an even deeper one. The oil giant announced it has drilled a well in the Silvertip field of the Perdido development that extends 9,356 feet below the surface and will later drill a 9,627-foot well in the same area. That handily beats the old record, which stood at 6,950 feet. In all, the Perdido development will have 35 wells and pump 130,000 barrels a day around the turn of the decade. So what's that have to do with greentech? It's just a reminder that the fossil fuel crowd isn't standing still. Instead, oil producers are exploiting technology and engineering to extend their traditional businesses. As a result, ethanol and biodiesel manufacturers will remain locked in tight competition to keep production prices down. It's going to be interesting. Ethanol was a growing industry in the 1970s until gas prices undercut it in the '80s. Peak oil is inevitable, but the battle will probably go on for quite some time.

How did Dean Kamen ever get famous? He gained worldwide fame during the decade for popularizing the Segway, a two-wheeled portable transporter that, if it had become even remotely successful, would have accelerated the obesity epidemic. As it is, the Segway has become a tourist oddity. (Best Buy in Serramonte has one on display by the way, right behind a rack of microwave ovens.) Look what it did to Brad Pitt in this photo I took last year. And this month, Kamen's touting that's he's the father of North Dumpling Island, a supposedly independent nation off the coast of Connecticut. North Dumpling will be a self-sustaining, eco-friendly, net-zero-energy community. Part of the energy savings will come from the fact that the lights on North Dumpling will be light emitting diodes, which use about 1/9th of the energy of incandescent bulbs (7.8 watts versus 60 watts) and last 50,000 hours instead of just 1,500 hours. Kamen's done a lot of interesting work in medical devices, but seriously, he's now a nation builder? North Dumpling selected Philips to provide its LEDs, which so far shows the government hasn't completely gone haywire there. Philips has become the world's largest lighting vendor, partly through acquisitions like ColorKinetics. Since 2005, Philips has spent $5 billion in lighting acquisitions. Will that be enough to save North Dumpling. Mark my words: Eight months from now, Kamen and his fellow citizens will be hunkered down with stone knives and bear skins.

Overlooked Solar Balance-of-Plant Technology Getting Its Due

While firms like Nanosolar and Solyndra garner the lions share of media and VC attention, one facet of the solar ecosystem has been relatively overlooked -- inverters and balance of plant. While innovation marches on in PV materials, inverter technology and solar installation architecture has been relatively stagnant. Until now.

Innovative firms like SolarEdge are challenging the way PV systems are installed and wired together as well as influencing the way modules are manufactured. And they’re doing it with ICs and semiconductors, not with PV materials.

SolarEdge, in its first interview with the press, has revealed a few tidbits about their technology and announced to Greentech Media that the company is engaged in sales agreements, testing agreements, joint development agreements and has booked significant initial orders for its products from major module manufacturers and system integrators.

And remarkably, despite less than splendid market conditions, SolarEdge has a number of term sheets and will be closing on a $20 to $25 million VC round B in the coming days or weeks. Its previous round was $11.8 million in funding from Walden International, Opus Capital and Genesis Partners.

I spoke with Lior Handelsman, VP and Co-founder of Israel-headquartered Solar Edge on Monday, Dec. 1.

The typical solar installation strings together a number of, say, 180W solar panels. Because they are in series the panels act like batteries and the poorest performing panel or a partially shaded or dirty panel can degrade the performance of the entire string. According to SolarEdge, partial shading of solar panels can result in a dramatic reduction of solar panel output. One completely shaded cell can reduce a solar panel’s output by 40 percent to 95 percent.

There are a few different approaches to solving this problem. Startup SolarEdge and a few other firms are leading the way.

The DC approach used by SolarEdge (as well as National Semiconductor, Tigo Energy and a few others) optimizes the Maximum Power Point current for each module and monitors each panel via an ASIC embedded in the panel. SolarEdge claims that the performance of a PV solar system can be improved by 15 percent to 20 percent by using the company's chips and inverters. There is also a reduction in cabling costs and wiring losses as well as an added element of security and panel-level monitoring.

An alternative AC approach integrates a micro-inverter with each panel and performs the DC/AC conversion at the panel itself, not at the inverter. Rockport-funded Enphase as well as GreenRay and Petra Solar are using variations of this method.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to each architecture. In my conversations with the notably conservative installer industry, many were enthusiastic about new energy harvesting technology but reluctant to work with a product that was not yet field proven like the micro-inverters/AC approach.

Nevertheless, expect new thinking and innovation in solar installation architectures because of innovative ICs from the likes of SolarEdge.