Bill Gross was in high school in Van Nuys during the energy crisis of 1973. As his first entrepreneurial adventure he started a business that sold solar energy products. At 15, he sold his own design for a parabola-shaped dish that used solar energy to cook hot dogs.

In college he started another company with his brother, now a partner in Malibu Capital, which invests in renewable energy.

Fast forward to the high-tech bubble. Gross, at the helm of the first "incubator," Idealab, was responsible for some big winners and losers. Among the winners were Overture (sold to Yahoo for US$1.6 million), Citysearch and Picasa. We won't get into the losers.

Today he is the CEO of a 30-person firm called Energy Innovations, maker of a solar collector. The company's "Sunflower" concentrates light on a solar module using an array of tracking mirrors. It's designed to get more energy from expensive (and scarce) silicon-based photovoltaic cells.

"I started thinking whether I could go back to the things I did as a kid, but with more scientific resources and more capital," Gross told FORTUNE, "to see if I could solve some of our energy problems."

Earlier this year, FORTUNE Small Business explained the motivation behind Gross's renewed interest in renewables:

"He sees solar power as a solution to our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and all its inherent political and economic costs. Says this crusader: 'People have fought over energy for so long—if we could bring low-cost solar energy to the planet, I think it could reduce wars.' Gross figured that if he could dramatically cut the cost of photovoltaic cells, he could help transform a fledgling industry into one potentially worth trillions of dollars as people around the world convert to solar power."
-- "A Wall of Mirrors" Feb. 2005

Gross is still into software, and the internet, and robots, and -- well, he's a geek, and a smart one at that. The renewable energy industry should be glad to welcome another CEO with a lifelong passion for energy and a career of hard lessons about turning technology innovations into money.