Silver Spring Networks has added another $15 million to its fourth round of funding to help it expand its reach in the smart meter networking field, VentureWire reported Wednesday. The $15 million investment comes on top of $75 million in series D funds the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup raised in October (see Silver Spring Grabs $75M). Venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers led the round, VentureWire reported. Previous investors have included Foundation Capital, JVB Properties and Northgate Capital. Add that to the nearly $70 million in venture capital, debt financing and warrants raised since 2007 (see Green Light post and VentureBeat post), and that's a lot of money for Silver Spring to expand its "Smart Energy Network." That now includes about 500,000 smart meters from companies such as Itron, General Electric and Landis+Gyr, embedded with the company's devices, which communicate to one another and utility access points via meshed radios using Internet protocol (IP)-based networking. Silver Spring expects to have about 2 million meters with its devices installed in place by year's end. With large-scale contracts with utiltiies including Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (5 million customers), Florida Power & Light (4.5 million customers) and Pepco Holdings Inc. (1.9 million customers), Silver Spring is set to install its devices in millions more meters over the coming years. Competitors in the field include smart meter makers that provide networking and communications themselves — Itron, GE, Landis+Gyr, Sensus and Elster are the big ones — as well as rival networking providers such as Aclara, Trilliant, Eka Systems and SmartSynch. Those companies use different means of carrying data for energy management and control between utilities and customers via the smart meter — and whether they utilize open standards or should be deemed proprietary is a topic of some debate (see Smart Grid: A Matter of Standards). No doubt all of these companies will be vying for a piece of the $4.5 billion in grants for smart grid projects contained in the stimulus package signed into law last month (see Obama Signs Stimulus Package). That funding is tied to using open standards when available and appropriate.

General Motors gave an update on the Chevy Volt today and not much has changed since the company: 1.) raised the estimated price from $30,000 to $40,000; b.) delayed it till November 2010; and, 3.) selected LG Chem instead of the A123 Systems consortium to supply it with battery technology. This all happened months ago and the status quo remains. The Detroit News, though, noted that GM has 30 Volt prototypes now and wants to expand by 80 in the summer. The Volt (and the counterparts GM will make for Europe) remain the company's hope for the future.

UPDATE: AIG has provided the locations and operators of the three power plants.

Unloved insurance giant American International Group  has sold its shares in three solar power plants in Spain that already are generating electricity for the grid.

The company’s AIG Financial Products Corp. said Wednesday the three plants have a combined generation capacity of 35.4 megawatts and a total value of about €300 million ($404 million). HgCapital, a private equity firm in London, bought the stakes for an undisclosed amount of money.

HgCapital said it bought the interests not only from AIG but also from 360 Corporate, an investment bank in Spain. The acquisition is HgCapital’s first in the solar energy sector, the firm said. The power plants were installed before the Spanish government lowered its solar energy subsidies last fall. HgCapital, which also invests in wind power, said two of the plants have a fix-axis design while the third uses a single-axis tracker system (18 megawatts).

AIG's spokesman Mark Herr said via email that the operators of those power plants are City Solar, Proener and SunPower. SunPower, based in San Jose, Calif., makes solar panels and single-axis trackers, and it engineers and develops solar power projects. The three power plants are located in the regions of Extremadura, Murcia and Castilla-La Mancha, Herr said.

AIG said it’s selling its assets to (hopefully) improve its business prospect. Owning solar power plants is apparently not a prudent idea when business is faltering, but giving out multimillion-dollar bonuses is.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that IBM hopes to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion dollars. The deal, if completed, will put to end one of the more enduring, and sometimes comical, rivalries in computing. Sun and IBM for years have competed against each other in servers, storage systems, consulting and other high-end computing markets. The comical part was how former Sun CEO Scott McNealy would try to characterize the rivalry as "humankind versus IBM Global Services." Somehow, that titanic battle occurred (on my behalf) without me even noticing. You too? But in any event, the deal will also have implications for the future of efficient data centers and the smart grid. Although it's relatively small compared to IBM, Sun has always done quite well in exploiting lab results commercially. In the past two years, Sun has showcased a number of technologies and design techniques it has employed to reduce data center power consumption. Last week, for instance, Sun showed off a flash-based hard drive for servers. IBM conducts a lot of the same research and has similar products, but sometimes these developments get lots in the heft and mass that is IBM. Sun, partly by virtue of its size and party by virtue of a strong talent for marketing complex technologies, can help IBM hone its message. In other words, the real value of this acquisition, beyond a large customer base, could be in Sun's ability to communicate. The combined companies will also now tower over HP and Dell in terms of sheer size when it comes to bidding on contracts for new data centers.

It looks like the Toyota’s new plug-in hybrid Priuses with lithium-ion batteries will be taking a spin in France. About 100 of the vehicles will be headed to the city of Strasbourg by late 2009 to be road-tested in a project with French utility EDF, the two companies said Wednesday.

Toyota and EDF have been working on plug-in hybrid trials since 2007, but those involved Priuses with standard nickel-metal hydride batteries. Those tests were expanded to the United Kingdom last year.

Toyota plans to launch its new plug-in Prius with lithium-ion batteries later this year, though that launch will involve only about 500 vehicles for testing with fleet customers. Besides those headed for France, about 150 will be headed to U.S. customers, Toyota said in January (see Toyota to Build All-Electric Car by 2012).

As part of the trials announced Wednesday, EDF and its subsidiary Electricité de Strasbourg will also set up several hundred charging points at homes, parking lots and along roadsides. The "innovative charging system" will link cars and charging stations to exchange information on vehicle identity, charging status and invoicing, the companies said.

It’s all part of EDF’s plan to build a nationwide electric transportation charging network (see Renault, EDF Go Electric in France). But beyond saying the two companies would work in a "technical and financial partnership with all stakeholders," it didn't name which partners it would be tapping for its charging system.

It might be Elektromotive. The Brighton, U.K.-based company has installed 40 of its Elektrobay charging stations, which use EDF technology, in London and another 40 in other cities. Those stations have been used in the EDF-Toyota plug-in trials. Earlier this month Elektromotive announced a partnership with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to work on accelerating electric vehicle charging station networks.

Other companies in the electric vehicle charging arena include Ecotality, Gridpoint, Coulomb Technologies and Better Place — the latter proposing a "battery-swapping" business plan in lieu of charging batteries that remain in vehicles (see Ecotality and Nissan Team on EV Charging Tech, Gridpoint Gets $120M, Buys V2Green, Coulomb Bags $3.75M For Electric-Car Charging and Better Place and Ontario Launch Project).

Whichever companies play a role, they'll have a challenge ahead. Utilities across the globe are testing systems to help them manage the power demands to come from an increasing number of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles expected to start hitting the streets in the next decade (see IBM Tests Smart Charging in Denmark and A V2G Test: Pool Electric Cars for Grid Needs).

They may also have financial support from the French government. French President Nicolas Sarkozy in October pledged €400 million ($549 million) to support the development of electric and hybrid cars. Last month, Sarkozy upped the ante by pledging €6 billion ($8.16 billion) to French automakers Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen in bailout funding tied to pledges to develop low-emission vehicles.

The first and the deepest. The government of Alberta is putting $8.83 million into a Swan Hills Synfuels underground coal gasification project. The project will be the first of it's kind in North America and the deepest in the world so far, reaching deeper than 1,000 meters below the surface, according to Calgary-based Swan Hills Synfuels. It's a $20 million project hoping to demonstrate that it would be possible to manufacture clean synthetic gas from coal resources in north-central Alberta. The technology is more or less like coal mining without a mine. Instead of an open pit you dig wells in the ground reaching down to the coal resources. Then you inject oxygen and saline water turning the coal into gas. Among Swan Hills Synfuels' competitors are Laurus Energy, a Houston-based company that borrows technology from the former Soviet Union to do almost the same thing. (see Coal Mining Without the Mine). Scotland is funding a similar project. The investment from the government of Alberta comes through Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI) and the coal seams are also expected to be used in future carbon capture and sequestration processes, after the coal is turned into gas. "Alberta has had success with coalbed methane and cleaner coal technology is part of our overall climate change strategy." said Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology Minister Doug Horner, in a statement. The syngas produced from the underground coal resources can be used for pretty much the same purposes as natural gas: power generation, gas for home heating, hydrogen, methanol and transportation fuels. It can also be used for pre-combustion carbon dioxide capture. According to AERI the method of undergroand coal gasification poses no risk to shallow fresh groundwater since the depths are below 1,000 metres. And being underground it's more enviromental friendly compared to traditional coal mining or coal gasifications methods, but of course not near as clean as solar or wind power.

U.S. companies making ethanol from corn just can't catch a break. Aventine Renewable Energy is the latest to face the threat of insolvency. The Pekin, Ill,-based ethanol producer said this week that it may have to file for bankruptcy protection if it can't raise cash quickly. The news came along with Aventine reporting a loss of $47.1 million in 2008, down from a profit of $33.8 million in 2007, despite selling a record amount of ethanol — a clear indication of the effect of falling ethanol prices. Aventine also warned that its cash on hand had declined to $700,000 as of March 12, a big drop from $119.2 million at the end of the third quarter of 2008. That could make it tough to meet a $15 million interest payment due April 1, or pay the $24.4 million it owes contractor Kiewit Energy Co., despite the fact that it stopped work on building two plants in the fourth quarter. If Aventine does file for bankruptcy, it would follow the example of corn ethanol maker VeraSun Energy Corp., which filed for bankruptcy in October (see VeraSun Files for Bankruptcy). It looks as if oil refiner Valero will profit from VeraSun's loss. Valero on Tuesday won a bid to buy seven of VeraSun's ethanol plants for $477 million, subject to federal bankruptcy court approval, MarketWatch reported. The bankrupt ethanol maker saw a total of $993 million in bids for its 17 plants. The economic picture for ethanol makers has been grim for some time, and the recent fall in gasoline prices — which are closely tracked by ethanol prices — hasn't helped matters. Sacramento-based Pacific Ethanol has shuttered three of its five producing ethanol facilities in the past two months as it seeks to renegotiate terms with two of its lenders, The Sacramento Bee reported earlier this month. Still, the federal government is so far sticking to its goal of producing 36 million gallons of ethanol by 2022, despite a U.S. Energy Information Administration report showing the nation's ethanol industry will likely fall short of that goal (see U.S. Won’t Meet Its Own Biofuel Mandate). That could put refiners and oil companies in a good position to shop for ethanol plants on the cheap, then turn around and get them running to meet that federal mandate.