I've heard this from a source and with the documents for an initial public offering filed, I don't expect Solyndra to confirm it, but it gives an insight into why the company seems to have moved ahead of some of the other start-ups in cadmium indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells.

CEO Chris Gronet gets a live video feed of the machinery on the factory floor. When and if production slows down, he knows quickly. He even gets the feed at home.

That sort of urgent paranoia lay at the heart of semiconductors and solar panel manufacturing. The multimillion dollar factories these companies must build can only become effectively profitable if utilized in a highly efficient manner. Intel...

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Former Vice President Al Gore says the White House will try to get a climate bill passed by late spring 2010 or earlier.

"The window for 2010 probably closes around when spring ends," he said during a speech at GreenBeat taking place in San Mateo. Things are looking a bit up. Senators Joe Lieberman (Gore's former running mate) and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are already working with Democratic senators to write a piece of legislation that will get at least some bipartisan support. It will probably include more subsidies for nuclear power, but otherwise will be similar to the Waxman-Markey bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed earlier this year.

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Platinum. It's one of the many banes of the fuel cell industry.

The catalytic membranes inside of methanol fuel cells are coated with it: it helps convert hydrocarbons into electric power. Platinum also helps eliminate particulates in the catalytic converter in your car. Although companies like Nanostellar are developing platinum substitutes, platinum remains the industry standard and it's not getting any cheaper. A few years ago, thieves would steal converters out of big rigs to get at platinum.

MIT researchers, led by associate professor of mechanical engineering and material science Yang Shao-Horn, have come up with a way to double the efficiency of fuel cells by creating...

SunPower's Doug Rose, the senior director of technology strategy, presented at the Silicon Valley PV Society in a talk titled, "Technology and Economics of High Efficiency c-Si PV." Of course, the thrust of the talk was the strength of SunPower's high-efficiency solar cells and panels, and the impact of efficiency on the cost and payback of a solar system.

The high efficiency of SunPower's solar cell stems in most part from its back-contact technology – a technology pioneered by founder Dick Swanson in the early 1980s at Stanford with low-cost manufacturing breakthroughs in 2001. The back contact design avoids gridlines on the front of the cell so there's no metal obscuring the cell...

Dow Corning wants to bring space age solar to the masses.

Solar panels on satellites have been coated with silicone, the rubbery stuff for household repairs, for years. It protects the solar panel from solar radiation and it also allows the module to operate at a higher efficiency because it is more transparent than other coatings.

Now, the chemical giant has begun to sell it for garden variety solar panels. The company's silicone will give panels greater durability and efficiency, but Dow says there is another attribute too.

"We are able to produce modules much faster," said Gaetan Borgers, global industry director of the Dow Corning Solar business. By switching to silicone, PV...

Digital technology – the cause of, and solution to, all of our energy problems.

That's the gist of dueling reports released this week, though they're not that far apart on closer examination.

The first, from the International Energy Agency, says devices like cellphones, laptops and other consumer electronics now make up about 15 percent of all household power use – and that, barring new energy efficient technologies, that could double by 2030, at a cost of about $200 billion in new power bills.

But at the same time, digital technology helps save massive amounts of energy, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. America's energy use would be about 20 percent...

If General Motors hasn't been kicked around enough in the past several weeks, the company today announced that it is working with Segway on the P.U.M.A. a two-wheeled vehicles for urban commuting that looks like a cross between a hot dog cart and an umbrella stand. Judge for yourself: You can already see hipsters lining up to get this. Didn't the Pope have something like this? It was demonstrated in New York City today. The personal transportation market has been the next big thing since Johnny Quest popularized the jet pack in the mid-1960s. So far, though, it's been the low-tech solutions like skateboards that have won out. Toyota has shown personalized vehicles, but...