Comments on: Organic solar thin film maker Konarka files for bankruptcy

By: Paul Martin

Paul Martin — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:56:52 +0000

Yeah, can imagine. I am sure they wouldn’t have got any investors.

By: Solar films

Solar films — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:11:08 +0000

Nice Blog!! Great Post !! Like your Blog and your ideas and i think its benificial for us and i keep to visit your blog regularly because i got lot of information through you blog

By: Ucilia Wang

Ucilia Wang — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:30:32 +0000

Efficiency definitely has something to do with it, along with price of course (obviously buyers aren’t inclined to spend big money on inefficient solar cells). I’m curious how do you know that Plextronics is doing “just fine” with its solar product considering it’s a private company that doesn’t disclose its finances? Konarka also seemed just fine for a while.

By: Jeremy Intemann

Jeremy Intemann — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:00:31 +0000

It’s not really about the efficiency perse, It’s about the number of kilowatt hours produced per dollar. so a low efficiency can be offset by a low cost of production. organic photovoltaics can be made much more cheaply than silicon or other inorganic-based PVs. The problem with Konarka wasn’t that they were trying to market organic PVs, several other companies operate just fine in this market (Plextronics, Polyera, Solamer, etc.). I heard Konarka had a poor buisness model and a management group that did a lot more talking than actually doing.

By: Ucilia Wang

Ucilia Wang — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:23:17 +0000

I think organic PV wasn’t meant to compete with the conventional silicon/thin films, and perhaps its investors thought the tech had advantages to offset the low efficiency issue, like embedding them in building materials. Sometimes efficiency isn’t the most important metrics for finding a good business case for a solar tech. But that BIPV market is just not growing as fast as anticipated.

By: wordpressreport

wordpressreport — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:28:01 +0000

Reblogged this on WordPress Report.

By: Albert Hartman

Albert Hartman — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:27:36 +0000

Incredible they got as far as they did. Organic PV had the worst efficiency of all in a large field of many solar competitors. This was clear from the start, so I’m amazed anyone gave them so much money.