Gotta say, I found this a surprising one. Enbridge Inc., the Calgary-based oil/natural gas pipeline and delivery company, is investing $10 million in concentrated solar PV manufacturer Morgan Solar, which is based in Toronto. I say surprising because Enbridge, while it has invested in solar, wind and geothermal projects before — the kind that generate immediate cash flow and come with an acceptable level of risk — has never really put its money behind a greentech play, with the exception of fuel cells. It may be true that $10 million is couch change for this multibillion-dollar corporate giant, but keeping in mind this $10 million could have been spent elsewhere, this is an intriguing move by Enbridge.

Does it want to be in the same club as integrated oil company Cenovus, which has captured many headlines related to its venture investments in everything from fusion power to water desalination technology? Not sure, but perhaps this is the first of more tech investments to come — as sign that corporate capital is playing a more important role in a country where venture capital is hard to come by.

Morgan Solar, mind you, hasn’t had a tough time raising capital. In March 2011 it aimed to raise up to $25 million (U.S.), but with Enbridge joining the party the round is oversubscribed at $28.8 million. The interest in Morgan Solar is understandable. It has developed an inexpensive and innovative light-guide solar optic that captures and directs incoming sunlight into a tiny, high-efficiency, finger-nail sized PV chip, achieving a balance of cost, efficiency, weight, and low-profile (i.e. the system is really thin) that may be unrivaled in the market. The company says its systems cost less to build, ship, deploy and maintain than competing technologies. Indeed, it’s bold enough to say that its Sun Simba product will offer a lower Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) “than solar technologies on the market today, or known to be under development.”

It should be pointed out that Enbridge owns three solar facilities that together represent 100 megawatts of capacity. Most of that comes from its 80 MW Sarnia Solar Project, which until recently was the largest operating PV facility in the world. It’s unclear whether Enbridge eyes using Morgan Solar’s CPV systems in future projects, but the potential certainly exists for collaboration on smaller demonstration projects. The reality, however, is that Enbridge has so far let others take on solar development risks. It then steps in and buys finished, operational projects that are already generating cash.

Morgan has other partners in the mix, some of them strategic. Iberdrola S.A., one of the world’s largest renewable-energy utilities, is a strategic investor, as is Nypro Inc., a contract manufacturer specializing in precision injection molding. Nypro, for example, makes the light-guide optic for Morgan Solar.

Morgan Solar, by the way, was recently named — for the second time — to Corporate Knights’ Next 10 list of most promising Canadian cleantech companies.

News that Toronto-based Morgan Solar raised another $16.5 million leaked out last week but the concentrated solar PV company is about to confirm the details, which include the fact that strategic investors Iberdrola and Nypro have returned for more. They join newcomer The Frost Group LLC, a private investment firm based in Miami that is led by Dr. Phillip Frost, who is also chairman of Teva Pharmaceuticals and CEO and chairman of OPKO Health, a publicly traded healthcare company that develops and commercializes a wide variety of medical products. The $16.5 million represents the bulk of what Morgan Solar is trying to raise in this round. For the rest, it’s aiming to bring aboard another strategic investor that has experience with project finance or develpment capabilities.

Morgan Solar is in the middle of ramping up. This year it expects to complete a number of demonstration projects at sites in Ontario and the United States. It’s establishing a manufacturing facility in San Diego, and it’s expanding its existing manufacturing and R&D presence in Ontario. The company’s Sun Simba product allows for the creation of super-thin CPV modules using proprietary light-guide solar optics, which continue to be unique in the industry as far as I can tell. Morgan Solar promises to deliver solar power — without subsidies — at costs that are grid competitive, and the company says it can offer this low-cost solar option this year, not in five years.

Personally, I look forward to checking out Morgan’s Ontario demonstration sites once they are complete, and I sincerely hope the Ontario government figured out a way to accommodate the company in the province’s feed-in-tariff program. Apparently there were some hiccups because the province’s local content rules didn’t account for the availability of CPV systems. Tisk, tisk.

My friends over at Earth2Tech are reporting that Toronto-based Morgan Solar, a promising concentrated solar PV startup, is heading into its round B of financing and hopes to raise between $20 and $25 million. Up until now the company has raised about $20 million, slightly less than half from private investors and the rest through government grants. Morgan Solar, in my talks with them, is serious about keeping its R&D and some manufacturing in Toronto, but it sees the first major volume happening at a new facility it plans to build in California. I don’t think Morgan will have trouble raising the money. I’ve seen the technology, know the founders well, and have talked to their early investors. There is solid commitment there and a sense that what the company is working on is truly ground-breaking. 

Montreal-based 5N Plus, meanwhile, is diversifying its business through acquisition. The company is the main supplier of cadmium telluride to First Solar and others, such as Abound Solar. But analysts were concerned 5N wasn’t diversified enough and was too dependent on its business with First Solar. So 5N decided this week to acquire Belgian-based MCP Group, which is a producer of specialty metals such as bismuth, gallium, indium and selenium. This allows 5N to tap into the market for CIGS solar cells (that is, copper indium gallium selenide cells), but also a whole range of other products: LEDs, flat-panel displays, fuel cells and other forms of energy storage.

Heading to the West Coast, biomass gasification expert Nexterra has raised $15 million in equity financing from Tandem Expansion Funds and ARC Financial. Nexterra makes small-scale biomass CHP systems based on the gasification of biomass. The systems are ideal for distributed generation in a hospital, university, industrial or municipal setting, and because it is ultra low emission it is a good fit for urban environments. The company has a solid partnership with General Electric and just snagged some government funding for a large biomass-based CHP system at the University of British Columbia, which says the 2-megawatt system when it’s up and running in 2012 will reduce its demand for natural gas by 12 per cent.

In Florida, algae-to-ethanol startup Algenol has acquired its German partner Cyano Biofuels GmbH. Okay, the company isn’t based in Canada, but Algenol’s founder Paul Woods is a Canadian who grew up in the Toronto area and kickstarted the natural gas retail market in Ontario before moving south. And some of Algenol’s core innovation comes out of the University of Toronto, so I consider the company an honourary Canadian corporate citizen. Cyano Biofuels is an expert in producing hybrid algae that can produce ethanol, and Algenol was already a minority shareholder in the company. Algenol saw the all-out acquisition as a way to accelerate the commercialization of its Direct-to-Ethanol process using genetically enhanced cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. I’m a fan of Algenol, which is the focus of a chapter in my upcoming book Mad Like Tesla.

Finally, Sustainable Development Technology Canada issued another round of grants to 17 companies doing cleantechie stuff. I’ll go through some of these in more detail later, either as part of a Clean Break column or a quick post. But check out the list — there are some interesting projects there. As I’ve always said, SDTC funding rounds are like Christmas time for cleantech news junkies like myself.

Toronto-based Morgan Solar, maker of a new type of concentrated solar PV system based on light-guiding optics, has upped its first round financing to $8.2 million from $4.7 million after attracting the dollars of two Canadian venture-capital groups.

You’ll recall the first phase of this round when it was announced in October. Spain’s Iberdrola, the world’s largest renewable energy provider, and Nypro Inc., a leader in injection molding and contract manufacturing, were part of that announcement, along with venture-capital firm Turnstone Capital Management LLC. The addition of two Canadian VC groups is encouraging because, well, it’s nice to see Canadians investing in Canadians, but also because it increases the chance that Morgan Solar will remain based out of Canada. “The funds will finance activities through to the commercial release of Morgan Solar’s unique Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) solar panel — the Sun Simba HCPV,” the company said in a statement. “Early manufacturing for testing and certification has started at Morgan Solar’s facility in Toronto. Initial commercial deliveries are expected by the end of the year, with global sales, manufacturing, and delivery capabilities ramping up in 2011.”

Tom Rand at VCi Green Fund in Toronto led a Canadian investor consortium that contributed $2.3 million. It wasn’t a problem finding interest, he told me today. “I just reached into my network and within days it was filled up.” Another group took on $1.2 million, but the investors behind it were not disclosed. Rand said he visited a thousand or so booths at the Solar Power International show in Anaheim in October and found Morgan Solar to be the only company offering a non-commodity solar play. “It was the only one that had something significantly different,” he said. “Someone finally asked, why are we using lenses, which is a technology from the last century. We know how to guide light now, so let’s guide light.” Rand added that Morgan Solar has the potential to disrupt the industry on price. “The question is whether they can meet demand” if they can get to that magic price point.

Since first writing about Toronto-based Morgan Solar a year ago, I’ve grown increasingly fond of this up-and-coming developer and soon-to-be manufacturer of concentrated PV systems. They think out-of-the-box, and they execute quickly. They fine tune until they get it right, and they don’t make a lot of noise until they get it right. They’re creative and original, and as a result stand out from others in the field.

So when I got a call from biz-dev director Nicolas Morgan telling me the company had secured $4.7 million in financing and that Spanish utility Iberdrola Group signed on a strategic investor, I guess I wasn’t surprised. Click here to learn more about the latest news from Morgan Solar, and its plans to get a commercial production line up and running in Toronto sometime in 2010. Also click here for an MIT Technology Review article about the company’s innovative technology.