It’s a journalistic cliché to pile on the top 10 lists at the end of the year and we’re not above year-end clichés. But here’s the problem -- if we were to list the top 10 greentech investments of the year for 2008 we’d end up with nine solar deals and a biofuels deal which is kind of repetitive and not at all representative of the greentech sector. So we’ll indulge ourselves, enlarge the list, and make room to include a water deal, a lighting deal, an automotive deal and a smart grid investment. And allow us to announce… The Top 21 Greentech Deals of 2008 As in 2007, solar was the dominant investment driver in greentech with more than a dozen solar firms winning funding rounds greater than $100 million. These large funding rounds occurred in the first three quarters of the year and for obvious reasons -- we are probably not going to see that kind of flurry for a while. Enormous funding rounds are not the typical M.O. for VCs -– building proprietary semiconductor factories is not what VCs consider “capital efficient.� But this size investment is required to work out the not trivial technical risks as well as scale to the production capacity needed to compete in this market. Large capital requirements loomed regardless of PV material system being funded whether it was CIGS (Nanoslar, Miasolé, SoloPower, Solyndra, etc.), CadTel (AVA Solar), or amorphous silicon (Optisolar). These terms applied for solar thermal as well (eSolar, Brightsource, Solar Reserve, Solel). This same capital intensity and scale was seen in the liquid fuels investments of Range Fuels and Amyris. VC investment in cleantech in 2009 won’t be as dramatic as 2008 but will remain a brightspot in the VC universe. We expect a drop in the dollar amount but the number of deals should hold steady with a focus on storage, smart grid and energy efficiency. Click here to view the full list.

The grid can accommodate a lot more solar and wind power than many experts believe, according to a new study. If it's correct, it could cut the cost of trying to deploy renewable power. Stanford doctoral student Elaine Hart has been running simulations which try to maximize the amount of solar and wind power going over the electrical grid in California in roughly its current state, according to a report on Wired.com. At least 70 percent of the power in California on a hot, summer day being generated by solar and wind in 2016, according to one result from the simulator. it's a simulation of course and the simulations only try to mimic what the grid might experience in hour-long slices over a single day. If the resources had been in place, renewables could have provided 50 percent of the power California needed on a winter day in 2007. (More on the study here.) Her ultimate conclusion is that the figure the governor has set for utilities -- get 33 percent of your power from renewable energy -- can go higher as far as the infrastructure is concerned. The study came out at the American Geophysical Union, which has been a source of a number of stories this week. Here's some of our coverage. The grid potentially could slow the development of wind and solar power on a large scale, according to some. In short, the volume of wind power or power from solar panels can't be predicted with much accuracy far in advance (unlike wave or tidal power, or even solar thermal) and wind and PV farms are often located far from urban centers that need power. (Think of it like organic food delivery boxes. You wouldn't like it if they showed up with 18 pounds of grapes one day and then disappeared for a month.). Accommodating that variability will take some storage and transmission technologies. Hart's study provides some indication that it may not be as hard as people thought. Future simulations will also look at the impact that large-scale energy storage, solar thermal plants, improvements in conventional power plants and electrification of cars will have. Hart's study indicates that hopes exist that this aspect  may not be as tough as it seems.

Venture capitalists will put a lot less money into greentech startups next year, predicts Rob Day, but that could be a good thing. Day, a partner at @Ventures (and a blogger for Greentech Media) believes there's a readjustment in financing coming in 2009. Until now, too many VCs have been putting large amounts of money into companies trying to horn into already crowded markets like solar. And, as the dollars have climbed, VCs have assured themselves that it would work because: 1.) the world needs lots of energy; 2.) the established energy companies seemed resistant to adapt to the new opportunities; and 3.) we're from Silicon Valley and know better. The result is going to be a haircut in funding that could go as deep as 40 percent or more in the first half of 2009, he said. But, again, that could be good because of where and how that money's been invested. Roughly 40 percent of the funds now are getting sucked up into massive rounds for individual companies. Over $1 billion has been invested in a few CIGS startups while cadmium telluride solar startup AVA Solar nabbed $104 million in a single round earlier this year. The big money is not just confined to solar. Luminus Devices, which has a high-efficiency LED, raised $72 million in the first quarter. That has lead to a lopsided market which has created unrealistic expectations for well-funded and underfunded companies. (Of course, for those companies that need $100 million for a new factory, this sort of stinks.) The credit market has effectively terminated these kinds of deals for the moment. Remove those and you're already down 40 percent. Add some general queasiness about the market overall and VC funding can easily drop by 50 percent next year. The real problem, however, could occur if a malaise sets in as a result in the drop in funding. The decline in funding could be seen as a lack of confidence in greentech. If that occurs and the sector gets branded as another Internet-like bust, it could cause a lot of promising companies to wither away. (He put together a slide show on his thoughts here. It's pretty entertaining.) He brings up a lot of good points. Funding no doubt will drop. On the other hand, you can already see the re-education of many investors taking place. Many have begun to pay more attention to green software companies and smart-grid companies that hope to port classic IT technologies to the grid. Can smart grid become a bubble too? Sure, but at least it's familiar territory to many, and these kind of companies don't need big factories. Thus, the dangers of over-funding are reduced. Plus, these companies tend to have self-regulating mechanisms. Solar and biofuel companies (and their investors) sometimes start to believe they really have the power to change the world. It's tough to get grandiose thoughts about a fuel intake regulator for scooters. And there's the issue of consumers. Consumers are clamoring for solar panels and alternative energy. Over-investment and excess supply will be bad for producers but it will also spur sales. The PC market went through chronic cycles of over-investment and excess supplies in the 1980s and '90s, but a lot of people still managed to make money. It's going to be an interesting year.

The wind blows. In more ways than one. Timing has always been the bane of wind farms. Winds can be stronger at night in California and Texas than in the day. Unfortunately, most regional customers are asleep, so utilities and power providers often have to dump the power generated by windmills during the wee hours. When utilities dump power, not only do they lose a sale, they lose the attendant tax credits. GeoBattery will try to solve this problem with sodium sulfur batteries, said CEO Dan Vogler. Sodium batteries are one of the best vehicles on the market for storing electrons. (Vogler will speak at the upcoming Greentech Innovations End to End Electricity conference on November 17.) "They have the lowest cost and highest charge density of any battery," he said. Sodium batteries, however, are also extremely heavy. Worse, they only work at high temperatures of 285 Celsius and higher. Below that level, the batteries go into a dormant state. That makes them a tough choice for a notebook or an electric scooter. But weight, temperature and extra real estate aren't problems for wind farms. GeoBattery's plan is to build datacenter-like rooms of these batteries next to renewable energy facilities. A single 6U-tall sodium battery can hold a kilowatt hour worth of power. (A U is 1.75 inches tall. It comes from the computer industry and is not some ancient Celtic term.). A 25,000 square foot facility could hold enough batteries to store 10 megawatt hours worth of power. Once in place, these sodium storage facilities could be used in a variety of ways. They could capture and store energy generated at night. Some wind farms could also try to work the system to sell their power at peak times, thereby increasing profits or reducing the time to break-even. Conceivably, these systems could also be used to store waste heat in factories. Power storage is often called the Google opportunity in greentech. The various ideas for storing power include large-format fuel cells, vanadium flow batteries, molten sodium, flywheels, compressed air and water columns. Most of these ideas are only moving out of the experimental stage now. Like GeoBattery, Japan's NGK is also working with sodium batteries.

CarbonFlow, which has developed software tools that the company says will make it easier for organizations to devise strategies and corporate policies for managing carbon credits, has pulled in more money from investors, this time from @Ventures. Other investors include Clean Pacific Ventures, OVP Venture Partners and Meridian Energy. Think of this as Sarbanes-Oxley services for the green market. Carbon regulation is already in place in Europe and will likely be imposed in the U.S. in the near future. Barack Obama wants to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. (whoops--that said 2010 earlier.) But measuring, tracking and putting a value on emissions, and the emissions that were produced by your suppliers, isn't easy. By automating the process, CarbonFlow says it can cut the costs or speed the time required for compliance. Experts on carbon trading have devised the software and it has a relationship with Det Norske Veritas (there's a name you don't see everyday), the largest verifier of carbon credit projects in the world. What's to stop Oracle or SAP from getting into this market? Nothing. But those companies often show a preference for just buying a startup in a new market than concocting their own software tools if it looks like the idea might take a long time to copy. So who knows, Carbonflow migh get snapped up. In the past two years, green software has been increasingly grabbing the attention of investors. Unlike many other greentech outfits, software developers have low capital requirements, which makes them attractive to investors. A few million dollars, a foosball table and an Internet connection and you are on your way. Compare that to a money suck like Bloom Energy -- the $100 million plus invested in the company has yielded exactly zero commercially available units. Other green software companies, or companies that use software to reduce the cost of green technology, include Sungevity (Internet enabled solar estimates), Greenbox and Fat Spaniel Technology.

Will the high-tech world ever get away from Intel?

Probably not. The company supplies chips for around 80 percent of the world’s PCs and servers and heavily influences the standards for packaging, manufacturing, lithography and computer design.

But the company also plays a large, and often unseen role, in corporate management. Intel alumni are everywhere, and they take their aggressive obsessions with numbers, manufacturability, constructive confrontation (i.e., yelling at meetings; drinking afterward), scalability and "two-in-a-box" management wherever they go. Two of Silicon Valley’s most storied VCs, John Doerr and Bill Davidow, came from the Intel sales department. Chip companies like Rambus and National Semiconductor are run by ex-Intel guys. It’s like a finishing school for the hard-nosed.

And now, you’re seeing the Blue Shirts pop up in greentech. Paul Misso, CEO of small wind turbine specialist Marquiss Wind Power came out of the Folsom offices of Intel. Ron Smith, who ran the wireless and flash memory units for Intel during the go-go late '90s, will soon come out of stealth with a startup that takes the heat produced by solar panels to power solar water heaters. Sub-One Technology, the anti-corrosion company working with Chevron Texaco? Run by Intel alum Andrew Tudhope.

GainSpan, a smart metering company that can control the power consumption of household appliances, is run by Vijay Parmar. The company grew out of a project he ran at the Intel labs.

Pete Van Deventer, who marketed chipsets out of Intel’s Folsom facilities, is the CEO of SynapSense, which monitors and controls power consumption in data centers with sensors and software. (Yahoo managed to cut its cooling power consumption by 21 percent in a Synapse-rigged datacenter.). The company plans to move into the market for building control.

Claude Leglise, the suave former head of Intel Capital, also has a company, say sources. It leases space on rooftops for solar installations.

Several Intel engineers have gone to work at OptiSolar, according to sources. And earlier this year, Intel spun out SpectraWatt while Intel Capital began to invest in alternative energy and energy efficiency companies.

And Andy Grove is going to teach a course on plug-in transportation at Stanford next year. The company itself is also involved in pretty much every green IT panel you can imagine.

Given the size of the company, it’s natural that you’d see Intel alums pop up. But Hewlett-Packard and IBM are big companies too and you don’t see those names popping up on executive CVs as much.

If you find yourself in a pitch meeting and the speaker uses eight three letter acronyms in five minutes, chances are you're listening to one of them. Don't say I didn't warn you.

GainSpan has a chip that can curb energy consumption in the home, and notify your doctor if you're about to have a heart attack. The company has produced an energy efficient WiFi chip that it hopes to install in dryers, electrical meters and other devices in the home. The idea is that utilities and consumers will shut off and/or power down  appliances with wireless signals remotely to curb electricity consumption. GainSpan is currently working with manufacturers to insert its chip into cold storage units, meters and other devices. Hitachi Plant Technologies, the industrial technology arm of the Japanese giant, makes sensors incorporating GainSpan's chips. The company was spun out of Intel. In an experiment, a large South Korean manufacturer asked the company to put the chip onto an electrocardiogram monitor, said CEO Vijay Parmar. It took about a month, but the company did it. A demonstration took place recently in Seoul. The chip fits onto a pad that is stuck onto a heart patient's chest. (In a real-life situation, security and other issues would have to be navigated, but you can imagine this would be the sort of thing you'd like to stick on an ailing parent at home. When the heart begins to wobble, a signal could be sent from a home base station to the hospital and the kids.) The "smart home" concept has been bandied about for years. Remember those refrigerators in the late '90s with built-in screens and Internet connections? Consumers didn't exactly snap them up. The rising cost of electricity, water and gas, however, is breathing new life into the concept. Powering down devices will cut the monthly power bills for consumers. Installing this type of equipment broadly will also allow utilities to avoid brown-outs or the need for expensive peaker plants. Two of the biggest greentech IPOs to date -- Comverge and EnerNoc -- essentially focus on this market. The question over the next five years is which standards and technologies will win. GainSpan directly competes against Zigbee as well as proprietary standards. All of them work, but it's unclear where and how utilities, equipment manufacturers and services companies will adopt them. Zigbee so far has amassed the broadest support, but Parmar and others argue it's a standard that's not loved by those that have to buy the equipment. Companies representing each of the approaches will debate it as the upcoming Greentech Innovations: End to End Electricity on November 18. Tune in if you can -- the sparks should fly.