Arnold Goldman, Chairman of BrightSource Energy

BrightSource Energy is one of the hottest companies in cleantech. Earlier this month BrightSource raised $115 million in a Series C round of financing from investors including Google.org and VantagePoint Venture Partners. In April, the company entered into a series of contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to build up to 900 MW of solar power in California, at a cost of $2-3 billion.

Arnold Goldman is the Chairman and Founder of both BrightSource Energy, based in Oakland, CA, and Luz II, the company's R&D, production and product engineering subsidiary based in Jerusalem.

In a recent interview with the web site Beyond Zero Emissions, Goldman discusses the origins of the company and its solar thermal technology. He explains why BrightSource has moved away from the parabolic troughs used by companies like Solel, and is instead building power plants based on its "Distributed Power Tower" technology consisting of thousands of relatively small mirrors (called heliostats). If you are interested in learning more about the company and solar thermal power, take a look at the online transcript of the interview.

Luz II is currently building a pilot plant in Israel's Negev Desert to test the company's technologies.

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