Green Wombat

In another sign of Silicon Valley’s growing stake in solar energy,  VantagePoint Venture Partners will soon announce an investment in a 100 megawatt solar power plant. VantagePoint’s John Woolard disclosed the investment today at the Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose.

The investment is notable on a couple counts. So far Silicon Valley
has preferred to invest in companies producing photovoltaic panels and
other solar technology for homes and offices. Valley VCs have stayed
away from solar thermal power plants, large facilities which use solar
radiation to heat liquids or other substances to create steam that
drives turbines to generate electricity. It’s the solar equivalent of
investing in a computer chip factory as thermal solar plants typically
cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Solar thermal plants
plug into the power grid and sell their electricity to regional
utilities.

"We look at things that are highly disruptive and can exist in a
world of declining subsidiaries," Woolard told a standing room audience
of several hundred people at a session on investing in solar energy.

Woolard didn’t identify the solar power plant company, the
facility’s location or the size of the investment and left before we
could corner him for more details. When asked if such an investment put
his firm in the position of becoming a big project financier, he said
VantagePoint’s strategy was to invest in the technology and engineering
team, leaving the financing of plant construction to other investors.

After the oil shock of the late 1970s, a slew of experimental solar
power plants were built, including several in the California desert.
But when oil prices subsequently fell to record lows in the 1980s, the
projects were largely abandoned. The return of sky-high oil prices,
global warming fears and laws to cap greenhouse gas emissions have
reignited interest in solar thermal plants and several are under
construction in Europe and the United States.