San Diego could be the first city in the country to use sewage gas in advanced fuel cells to generate electricity. We’ve got that and the rest of San Diego’s tech news roundup, which was abbreviated last week by the Thanksgiving holiday.
—The City of San Diego is set to begin construction next month on a biogas purification system from BioFuels Energy of Encinitas, CA, at its Point Loma Wastewater Treatment plant that is part of a $23.5 million renewable energy project. Methane gas from the sewage treatment plant will be injected into the natural gas distribution system, enabling the city and UC San Diego to withdraw gas elsewhere for use in power-producing fuel cells from FuelCell Energy of Danbury, CT.
—San Diego-based wireless chip designer Peregrine Semiconductor hopes to raise as much as $100 million in an initial public offering. The 20-year-old fabless chip design company said in a regulatory filing that it plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which includes financing its growth, developing new products, asserting and defending its intellectual property rights, and new capital spending.
—The Cooley law firm issued its Venture Financing Report for the third-quarter that ended Sept. 30. The report, which analyzes 92 deals nationwide with a total capital investment of approximately $988 million, characterizes deals during the three-month period as “a mixture of optimism and caution.”
—San Francisco Xconomist Lisa Suennen, who is a founding member of the Psilos Group in Corte Madera, CA, asked in an editorial she wrote for the Xconomist Forum whether anyone really cares about privacy and security when it comes to electronic healthcare records. Suennen was the moderator for our Xconomy panel discussion that focused on the consumer perspective in innovations in healthcare IT.