Vancouver Island Technology Park

Access to capital is a recurring challenge for all tech companies. There are so many options; so many choices. Learn how the benefits of venture capital and strategic investment can help your company’s growth strategy.

This is your opportunity to hear from representatives of the Renaissance Fund – Walden Capital, Ventures West, Vantage Point and Celtic Ventures and a representative of active strategic investor Microsoft, who will share their insights on this important issue.

The Province will provide a further $25 million to develop innovative, clean energy projects in British Columbia’s rural communities through the Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund, Premier Gordon Campbell announced today.

“The innovative clean energy projects supported through the ICE Fund are helping communities save energy, save money and reduce their carbon footprint,” said Premier Campbell. “In addition to supporting local energy-efficiency, the new technology developed can be commercialized, helping build B.C.’s green technology sector, and seizing the opportunities of the growing low-carbon economy.”

In July, the provincial government announced the first 15 successful applicants to receive support from the ICE Fund. Approved projects representing bio-energy, geothermal, solar and other alternative energy sources shared nearly $25 million from the Province, representing about $80 million in total investment.

With many months of development for application integration and over 450 webpages to create, Nanaimo’s site was always going to be a big project. But those were just a small part of the project as a whole. From strategy to development to design to accessibility, this site has every angle covered.

The City of Nanaimo – “The most desirable, livable small city in North America” – has made a concerted and highly successful effort to be on the forefront of web technology, as a municipality. The City wanted to provide quality information and services to Nanaimo citizens online and to make those services available 24/7. And they wanted to do it with a stylish new website that shows off their forward-looking ethos.

Like many parts of southwestern Ontario, the four mid-sized cities of the Waterloo and Wellington regions have endured a series of shock waves. There’s the rising Canadian dollar, emboldened Chinese competition, a limping U.S. economy and the lurching North American automotive sector. The results have been predictable. The manufacturing industries in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph have shed thousands of jobs over the past several years, in everything from auto parts to snowblowers, and bank machines to furniture.

But the Waterloo-Guelph area — some 470,000 people within an hour’s drive west of Toronto — is resilient. Economists from the Bank of Montreal and the Conference Board of Canada earlier this year forecasted the region would bounce back, respectively predicting 2.7% and 3.3% average annual rates of real GDP growth between 2009 and 2012, among the highest in the country. “The area has demonstrated its ability to absorb these shocks in the past by moving up the value chain,” noted BMO’s report.

This week, the City of Penticton is installing an adaptive street lighting system – among the first of its kind to be installed in British Columbia – that will help the municipality reduce its environmental footprint, improve street lighting and cut maintenance costs, Streetlight Intelligence Inc. (TSX-V: SLQ) announces.

“We are pleased to see Penticton join other BC communities in reaping the energy and cost-savings benefits of intelligent streetlight management,” said Vince Krynski, CEO of Streetlight Intelligence, headquartered in Victoria. “The typical Canadian municipality spends about one-third of its energy budget on street lighting and our system can reduce that amount by up to 50 per cent.”

Carmanah Technologies Corporation (TSX: CMH) today announced a new flagship product in its line of solar-powered marine beacons: the M708 marine lantern. Combining an advanced optical design with high-efficiency solar modules and high-efficacy LEDs, the M708 is Carmanah’s highest output LED marine lantern to date. Building on the company’s industry-proven technology — used and trusted by marine authorities around the world for its rugged design and low-maintenance operation — the new M708 lantern offers increased optical efficiency, improved light uniformity, and unparalleled light performance in a compact solar-powered unit.

Fully configurable with 256 flash patterns and a minimum peak intensity of 125 candela (and performance up to six nautical miles), the M708 lantern is available in each of the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation (IALA) light colors, making it suitable for a wide range of navigation and hazard-marking applications. For applications requiring multiple lanterns, an optional global positioning satellite (GPS) feature enables two or more units to be synchronized to flash in unison.

Annual meeting also produced changes to board Andrew A. Duffy, Times Colonist Published: Saturday, September 20, 2008 The name may have changed, [...]

Carmanah Technologies Corporation (TSX: CMH) has received an initial $1 million order from Lyon, France-based telecom provider TWIST to supply solar power systems for a telecommunications project in North Africa. The project, facilitated by Solergitech, Carmanah’s authorized distributor in the region, will power a network of telecommunications towers with the company’s stand-alone solar power systems.

According to Ted Lattimore, Chief Executive Officer of Carmanah, this application — as a part of an ongoing project with an estimated value of up to $6 million over the next three years — represents a significant market opportunity for the Victoria-based solar technology company.