khoslaI’m delighted to announce that Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley’s highest profile green investors, will be speaking at our GreenBeat conference next week.

Khosla is important for two reasons He’s probably the most prolific investor in the sector around, having backed a company in almost every area of clean technology, from ethanol to solar — and was one of the first to make such a bold string of bets. For a while, it became his singular focus. And his firm, Khosla Ventures, just raised $1.1 billion in fresh cash, and will invest much of it into green investments.

Second, at the same time, he brings a refreshing dose of skepticism, at least as it concerns the potential for profitable investments in the “Super Grid,” our term for the much more efficient grid we’re moving toward here in the U.S.

This Super Grid, to summarize, will let consumers put their own power back on to the grid, so that it runs both ways. Many investors and experts predict a boom in the sector, as utilities and other players (Google, for example) move to aggressively put smart meters on homes to give consumers more control over their power use, and more sophisticated communications and security measures to make it all hum. Finally, there’s need for energy storage, and more efficient transmission overall as things like electric cars get plugged in to the grid.

I first spoke to Vinod about his views about the smart grid back in August, when he announced his fund. He said it was the one area of clean technology he hasn’t invested in. He wants to, but hasn’t found anything interesting. Yes, there’s huge opportunity is to upgrade our aging electrical grid to make it smarter, but the the large electrical utilities own much of the transmission, and will make most of the investments themselves; they won’t cede turf without a fight. Some big players, such as Cisco and Oracle can also do well by supplying software and communications, but startups with few resources have a hard time getting a foot in the door. Some, like Silver Spring, have worked hard to penetrate the market for years, and only recently have gotten traction — but they’re an exception. Most fail.

Finally, the sector is highly regulated, and so the fate of startups can be made or broken at the whim of government bureaucrats or politicians setting policy. For example, one of Khosla’s biofuel companies, Coskata, got rejected in its bid for government funding.

So Khosla will speak on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 19, and we’ll this with our chat with Steve Westly, the former California controller and eBay executive who, will give a “rebuttal” of sorts. He is more optimistic about opportunities in the grid, has already invested in the area and plans a lot more.