Applied Materials said one of its customers has reduced its contract from about $1.9 billion to $250 million in light of the global economic meltdown.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied, which develops and makes factory equipment for producing solar panels, didn’t name the customer in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

Applied said the original contract, announced in March 2008, involved selling equipment for making thin-film solar panels, which use a layer of amorphous silicon and another layer of microcrystalline silicon for converting sunlight into electricity.

The announcement provides more evidence that the financial market crisis has hit the solar industry hard -- perhaps harder than many have anticipated. There has been no shortage of layoffs and business-restructuring announcements from private and public solar companies. BP Solar recently said it would be shuttering some of its manufacturing operations and laying off 620 employees.

Applied’s executives had previously warned of a slower market demand for 2009. Back in February, the company’s CEO Mike Splinter said he wasn’t expecting to sign new contracts for a few quarters.

"We are planning for a prolonged period of weakness. We are still in the early days of this crisis. There is much we will still learn over the next year," said Splinter over a conference call with financial analysts to discuss the company's quarterly earnings.

The Indian company Green Infra has set a goal of having 500 megawatts of renewable energy in its portfolio by 2012. Wind energy will stand for 300 megawatts of the clean power investment while small-sized solar power projects will generate 100 megawatts. The rest will come from biomass and small gas-based projects. Green Infra is promoted by IDFC Private Equity Fund. The new green power project will need an investment of Rs 3,000 crore, according to Projects Today, the Indian projects database Website. But the investment will also be supported by various Indian Government incentives. As a commercial player in this field, Green Infra can benefit from concessional import duty on certain components of wind electric generators, excise duty exemption, get ten years’ tax holiday on income generated from wind power projects and benefit from an accelerated depreciation and loan from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA). According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India has had a total of 26.95 billion units of electricity generated from wind power projects during the last three years. On the same note, MNRE has fixed a target for the whole country of 10,500 megawatts coming from wind power by 2012, according to The Economic Times. And the incentives from the Government are crucial to the development. "The robust growth in the country's wind power generation is largely driven by the incentives provided by the government to companies which set up wind power farms," said Santosh Kamath, KPMG Advisory Services' Associate Director, to The Economic Times.

“It’s the co-products, stupid.� -- Riggs Eckelberry of OriginOil A wave of algae biodiesel firms and and an accompanying amount of hype have surfaced recently.  Some firms are making outlandish claims about the volume of algae they can produce from an acre of land.  They'll be hoisted with their own petard soon enough. There are many pieces to the algae puzzle that seem like afterthoughts, but are actually crucial to the economics -- co-products, nutrients, harvesting, drying, and conversion technology. System design and algae strain (which seem to be the focus of most discussions) are important, but not the only components. Co-generation, co-location, and co-products are a critical aspect to an economically scalable and sustainable business model. Algae producers must look for synergies with other industries and products and provide higher value services, food and chemicals, and then transition to fuel. High-Value Co-Products Fertilizers Animal Feeds -- Lipinated algae meal for animal feed High-Value Foods and Food Ingredients Nutraceuticals ($20,000 per ton versus fuels at $100 per ton) Bio-Plastics High-Value Services Biomass/Process Waste Heat for Generating Electricity CO2 Mitigation Wastewater Mitigation

The diagram here shows the potential inputs and outputs of an algae farm (from Proteus).

XL Renewables’ business plan might serve as the model for the nascent algae fuel market.  The company co-locates algae production near a dairy farm and a biorefinery, using algal co-products to supplement livestock feed and using dairy waste products and algal biomass to feed the power plant. Algae farmers will best be served by siting near a waste water facility or other synergistic partner According to an algae investor and entrepreneur colleague, “It's not about the oil for algae, it's about the carcasses of algae. The oil is the leftovers.  Margins on JP4 from algae oil could be $0.25 on $2.25. But all those bodies from the dead little algae to make the oil is worth $1,000/ton with a cost of $600.�

• This is a small excerpt from the April issue of the Greentech Innovations Report which dives deep into the algae pond.  You can subscribe to it here.

The ranks of biofuel producers facing bankruptcy continues to climb, with Pacific Ethanol the latest to add its name to the list. The Sacramento-based maker of ethanol from corn reported last week that its creditors had given it until the end of April to pay them back or renegotiate terms. The company is in default on $250 million in loans and could face bankruptcy if it can't find more cash or renegotiate. The past two months have seen Pacific Ethanol shutter three of its five plants in the face of mounting losses. The company last week reported a 2008 loss of $151 million, a decline from 2007 losses of $18.6 million. While the company's sales grew to $704 million in 2008, up from $461.5 million in 2007, the company's 2008 cost of goods eclipsed sales for the year, rising to $737.3 million, up from $428.6 million in 2007. Those figures lay out the challenge facing ethanol companies, with high prices for corn and energy eking away at margins and falling gasoline prices dragging down prices for the fuel they make. Aventine Renewable Energy warned last month that it too may face bankruptcy if it can't raise cash. The Pekin, Ill.-based maker of corn-based ethanol reported a loss of $47.1 million for 2008, compared to a profit of $33.8 million in 2007. And  VeraSun Energy Corp., another once high-flying corn ethanol maker, filed for bankruptcy in October (see VeraSun Files for Bankruptcy). Last month, top U.S. oil refiner Valero bought out VeraSun's plants Whether refining giant Valero can make a go of the business remains to be seen. It bought out VeraSun's plants for $477 million and said earlier this month that it intended to run them at full capacity despite ethanol's poor margins. The plants it bought have an annual production capacity of 780 million gallons, or about 7.5 percent of the country's total. Times are hard for biodiesel makers as well. Last week, Houston-based Nova Biosource Fuels threw in the towel, filing for bankruptcy protection. The company reported a 2008 loss of $42.3 million, compared to a 2007 loss of $19.4 million, even as revenues grew nearly threefold. Nova Biosource has also seen falling prices for petroleum-based diesel fuel dragging down what it can command for its biodiesel. It reported that its per-gallon sales price has fallen from a peak of about $5 in mid-2006 to less than $3 in late 2008 and early 2009. Europe's decision to impose tariffs on biodiesel imports also has hurt U.S.-based biodiesel makers, which export roughly four-fifths of their product to Europe, the New York Times' Green Inc. blog noted.

Bright Automotive, the plug-in hybrid car company spun out of the Rocky Mountain Institute this year, says it will show off its car on April 21 on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Earlier, it was going to debut the car at a show in Norway in May. The name of the car is going to be the Idea. C'mon. Can't you think a little harder than that? ElectraScoot? PowerDrive? Mighty-Lighty (one of the attributes of Bright's car is that it will be comparatively lightweight, which increases battery range)? How about "The same force of nature that is used to remove unsightly eyebrow hairs will charge your car!" as a slogan? People are going to confuse it with Ikea. We interviewed Bright CEO John Waters back in January. He said that the car, which will get 100 miles per gallon, can run on battery packs 40 percent smaller than competing electric cars because of aerodynamics and weight. The car drives on battery power for the first 30 miles and then switches to hybrid to get the full 400 mile range.

"It's a revolutionary platform," he said. "The platform that's been on the road today is 100 years old. [The traditional technique for making cars] uses a lot of steel."

Bright will also face the same challenges in raising capital and moving from crafting prototypes to producing commercial vehicles. But it does have experience on its side. Waters worked on the battery for the General Motors EV1 and also worked at Ener1, which makes lithium-ion batteries. Many of the other executives have years of experience in the auto business.

Weight and poor design result in a disproportionate amount of fuel consumption in vehicles, Waters said back in January. The U.S. Post Office operates 162,000 delivery trucks that get around 10 miles per gallon, he said, and these trucks drive around 18 miles a day. If those trucks are put into use 300 working days a year, that's 87.5 million gallons of gas consumed by those white little trucks trolling your neighborhood. Boosting mileage to 100 miles per gallon conceivably could save nearly 80 million gallons of gas.

A one cent increase in the price of fuel raises the operating budget of the federal government by $8 million, Waters said.

It hopes to be in mass production in 2012. Initially it will target the delivery business.

Ember, which specializes in ZigBee chips and other wireless networking devices, said it raised $8 million more today. Since 2001, it has raised $89 million. Polaris Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital, RRE Ventures, Vulcan Capital, DFJ ePlanet Ventures, New Atlantic Ventures, WestLB Mellon Asset Management (formerly West AM) and strategic partners such as Chevron Technology Ventures and Stata Venture Partners participated in the round. Earlier investors include STMicroelectronics, Hitachi and MIT. On one hand, it's an unvarnished positive. Who doesn't like money? ZigBee and remote wireless networking has also taken longer to take off than anticipated. Back in the early part of the decade, ZigBee chips and chips on competing protocols were championed as remote sensors for "extroverted computing." (Disclosure: That is a  meme I made up and tried to popularize. It flopped big time.) The devices could be used to monitor wildlife, or man security cameras in your home. The public yawned. Now, however, ZigBee has a reason to live: the smart meter and smart home. By putting ZigBee warts on energy-hungry appliances like dryers, homeowners can automatically, autonomically and easily control power consumption better. The market for 802.15.4/ZigBee devices is expected to reach as high as 292 million units in 2012, up from about 7 million units in 2007, according to research firm, In-Stat. On the other hand, $89 million is a lot to sink into a company that makes what are rapidly becoming commodity chips that will also be produced by large, established manufacturers. Getting chip companies off the ground has become increasingly difficult during the decade because of the inherent costs of chip design and competition. Talk to VCs: most of them have veered away from chips. It's just not fun anymore. The total also gets close to that "magic" $100 million mark. It's tough to quantify, but after a company raises $100 million, you begin to hear skepticism about it. Like, "what are they doing with that money?" Again, it's tough to put your finger on, but Montalvo Systems, E-Ink, Alien, and other chip/hardware companies went from hot to not as they neared and passed that funding milestone. Ember isn't there yet, and it's in a hot market, but these are all factors that should be taken into account.

Prism Solar Technologies' CEO Rick Lewandowski just called to say that the company isn't seeking $150 million to build out a factory at a site it had just purchased, contrary to what's been reported by Dow Jones' Clean Technology Insight and VentureBeat.

Lewandowski said he had just closed a bridge round that is under $5 million and was planning to announce it in about a week. "There is no new round open, and we are not seeking new funding at this point," Lewandowski said. 

Prism, founded in 2005, has developed a holographic film that can concentrate sunlight onto silicon-based solar cells to improve power production. The holographic film, sandwiched between glass, can capture the desired portions of the light spectrum to boost energy production (see company diagrams). The film then reflects the light in various directions, so the light can hit the front and back of the silicon-based solar cells to improve energy output as well, the company said.

Based in Lake Katrine, N.Y., Prism Solar said last month it had purchased a former plasma display panel factory in Highland, N.Y., from Panasonic for $3.75 million and intended to convert it into a manufacturing center for making 60 megawatts of solar panels per year and a gigawatt of the holographic films, which would be sold to solar panel makers. The old Panasonic factory already came with equipment and a set up that can be re-used for solar panel manufacturing, the company said.

Prism raised $2 million for a seed round. Then it raised $6.5 million for its Series A in 2007, Lewandowski said. Earlier this year the company won a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help it start commercial solar panel manufacturing. Prism has a research and development center in Tucson, Ariz. It plans to start holographic film production at the Tucson facility first and assemble those films into panels at the New York factory, the company told Greentech Media earlier this year.