By TODD WOODY

Venture capital investors are making a big bet on Amonix, a company in California that has spent 20 years developing concentrating photovoltaic power systems that resemble gigantic solar panels.

In one of the biggest green technology deals of the year, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm is leading a $129.4 million investment in a long-promising solar technology that is starting to gain traction in the United States.

The venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and other investors are making a big bet on Amonix, a company in southern California that has spent 20 years developing concentrating photovoltaic power systems that resemble gigantic solar panels.

Plastic lenses focus the sun on tiny but highly efficient solar cells to generate more electricity than conventional photovoltaic panels.

The so-called multijunction cells, which were first developed to power satellites, use fewer expensive semiconducting materials like silicon.

"We have reviewed hundreds of solar companies, and Amonix stands out to us as one that has breakout potential," said Ben Kortlang, a partner at Kleiner Perkins who formerly helped lead the alternative- energy investing unit at Goldman Sachs. "We believe this is the low- cost solar technology for sunny climates."

Scientific challenges, high costs and bankers' wariness about financing cutting-edge technology have resulted in the construction of only a small number of concentrating photovoltaic power plants, mainly in European countries that offer generous subsidies for renewable energy.

But Mr. Kortlang and Amonix's chief executive, Brian Robertson, said the company had overcome the hurdles to making concentrating photovoltaics cost-competitive and had proved the potential of the technology at small-scale solar farms in Spain and in the United States.

Demand for the technology has started to grow in the United States as the solar market has expanded and utilities have sought to meet renewable energy targets.

Last month, SolFocus, an Amonix rival, began construction of a one-megawatt concentrating photovoltaic power plant for a community college in the desert northeast of Los Angeles. And a German company, Concentrix Solar, will build a one-megawatt concentrating photovoltaic plant at the tailings site of Chevron's molybdenum mine in Questa, New Mexico.

Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research and consulting company, said that concentrating photovoltaic power plants could gain an edge in some markets because they need far less land than other solar technologies and consume no water in electricity generation.

A number of large solar power plant projects planned for the California desert have become bogged down in disputes over their effects on wildlife and water consumption and the need to build new transmission systems to connect them to the power grid.

Mr. Robertson said that Amonix planned to build solar farms in the Southwestern U.S. desert that would generate one megawatt to 20 megawatts of electricity and could be plugged into existing transmission lines.

Also in the Amonix investment round are Adams Street Partners, Angeleno Group, PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, The Westly Group, Vedanta Capital, New Silk Route and MissionPoint Capital Partners.

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