The Green Wombat (one of B2.0's new blogs) reports that VantagePoint Venture Partners is planning to invest in a 100-megawatt power project in Silicon Valley:
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.