A year after the Vehicle Production Group (VPG) closed a $50 million Department of Energy loan for designing a natural gas vehicle, the company used the money as planned, began production and is seeing hundreds of vehicles on the road so far. Read More »
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Ucilia Wang
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Solexant, a Silicon Valley solar thin film startup that once plotted to build its first commercial-scale factory in Oregon, has quietly raised a $30,000 round. Read More »
Utilities don’t often invest in new tech manufacturing, but then, California’s PG&E isn’t your average utility. PG&E has requested state approval to enable it to invest $9.9 million of taxpayer money into a solar engineering and manufacturing service center run by commercialization startup SVTC Technologies. Read More »
Cutting down on silicon used in solar panels has been a hotly pursued goal for solar startups. And now a new player is entering the ring: meet Twin Creeks Technologies, which is launching a machine that will dramatically cut the use of silicon in solar cells. Read More »
BrightSource Energy, which builds solar power plants and plans to do an IPO, has completed about a quarter, or 25 percent, of its first project, Ivanpah, which is on schedule to come online next year, the company said in a government filing on Friday. Read More »
Alan Salzman, co-founder of VantagePoint Capital Partners, has two words of advice for investors trying to make money on their cleantech investments in a difficult year: be patient and embrace the enemy. Read More »
Solar panel projects only started to vie for California utilities’ interest in 2007, yet the tech is set to become the largest piece of renewable energy in the state in less than a decade. Check out our charts: Read More »
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Solar thin film maker MiaSole is fighting for survival in a solar market that has seen many manufacturers shutter factories over the past year. The startup announced Wednesday that it’s raised $55 million to help it enter a new market and boost its sales staff. Read More »
Spurred by recent support from the U.S. government and rock-bottom natural gas prices, the big auto makers appear to be getting on board with natural gas-powered vehicles. Read More »
Bringing solar energy to the masses is generating sunny interest from investors these days, and SolarCity announced Wednesday that it has raised $81 million in equity to continue building its empire. Read More »
The past year has been difficult for solar panel makers as many of them shuttered factories and filed for bankruptcies. The latest sign of this bleak time comes from a Tuesday announcement by Abound Solar, which is now suspending production and letting go of 180 workers. Read More »
The solar market outlook for2012 is rather gray to First Solar, which on Tuesday announced net losses, plans to idle production lines and a cut to its 2012 sales forecast. Read More »
Enphase Energy, which makes solar electronics and filed for an IPO last June, is still waiting for the right time to make its public market debut. But in the meantime, it’s been doubling its sales. Read More »
President Obama wants more natural gas development, and with it he wants to see more natural gas powered cars on American streets. He announced Thursday a $30 million R&D fund to develop technologies that will make natural gas cars cheaper and safer to drive and refuel. … Read More »
Here’s what you need to know about flow batteries: how they work, what innovation is happening in the market, who buys these batteries, and what are the benefits? Read More »
Will car sharing pioneer Zipcar move into the emerging industry of peer-to-peer car sharing, or enabling neighbors to rent out other neighbors’ vehicles? Well, Zipcar hasn’t launched such a service, but it’s invested in one of the new peer-to-peer car sharing startups Wheelz. Read More »
Despite a history of underwhelming track records, Nanosolar still has investors who believe the thin film company could make it big. Nanosolar just raised a $20 million round for what it hopes will be a new beginning for a company. Read More »
SunPower said on Thursday in its earnings call that it will be going on the offensive in 2012, aggressively selling solar projects and residential leases, and developing more efficient solar panels. Read More »
Solar Frontier, the largest manufacturer of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar panels, announced Wednesday that it’s shipped 13.2MW to NRG Solar, which is evolving from being a buyer of solar power projects to a developer. Read More »
Solar thin film maker Energy Conversion Devices held on for much longer than what some industry watchers had expected, but at the end, the Michigan company couldn’t resuscitate its downward spiral and on Tuesday announced it’s filing for bankruptcy. Read More »
Solar startup Alta Devices, backed by investors such as Kleiner and Dow Chemical, gives us a tour of its new pad in Silicon Valley where it’s setting up a pilot production line to make gallium-arsenide solar cells. Read More »
Venture-backed LED developer Bridgelux has long wanted to tackle the Chinese market, and it’s found a partner to do that: the company just raised $25 million from manufacturer Kaistar in China. Read More »
It’s been painfully apparent that many of the well-funded startups building next-gen solar tech have yet to ship solar panels in any large volumes and have missed their targets. And even the folks in the solar industry are starting to take each other to task. Read More »
Beacon Power, the federally-backed energy storage company, has found a buyer. Rockland Capital plans to pay $30.5 million for Beacon’s assets, including a 20MW flywheel energy storage plant that that received a $43 million loan guarantee. Read More »
A 1 GW solar farm in California whose fate was in limbo for a while is finally moving forward: Solar Millennium has sold it to Solarhybrid, which will change the technology for the project from concentrating solar thermal to photovoltaic panels. Read More »
Enerkem, which develops technology that turns waste into biofuel and has won federal government backing, on Friday filed the S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $125 million. Read More »
The failure rate of developers to fulfill their renewable energy contract in California has historically been around 30-40 percent, but that failure rate is expected to come down now that utilities are seeing better prepared and managed projects — and more developers who are in the … Read More »
Markus Beck, the former head of First Solar’s now shuttered next-gen solar tech project, is looking to keep his dream alive and develop a new process to make thin film solar panels. Given the state of the market, it could be a tough play. Read More »
SolarCity, which has built a business around installing solar panels on rooftops, plans to file for an IPO as early as next month, according to Bloomberg. The report says the IPO will value the company at more than $1.5 billion. Read More »
Both job creation and layoffs are particularly sensitive topics during a weak economy, let alone an election year, so the big layoff at Amonix’s solar factory in Nevada raises questions about the health of the Kleiner Perkins-backed company and its promise to bring many jobs Read More »
A trade complaint filed against Chinese solar makers, accusing them of benefiting from illegal subsidies, has drawn a line in the sand for the U.S. solar industry. Now the Commerce Department has issued a finding that tilts the case in favor of the petitioner, SolarWorld. Read More »
Spain once symbolized a great solar boom – and then bust – as its government lowered incentives to reign growth. That repercussion of that boom has continued, however, and on Friday the government announced a suspension of the incentive program to cut costs. Read More »
The long-promised but perpetually fledging biofuel industry still remains a big focus of government support. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that it has made a conditional commitment for a $232.5 million loan guarantee to biofuel maker ZeaChem. Read More »
A tough legal showdown between the city of Boulder and utility Xcel Energy is brewing as the city prepares to force Xcel to sell its distribution network. Read More »
Asia, with its rapidly growing number of car owners and large pollution problems, could very well be the biggest market for biofuels and green chemicals one day. LanzaTech, which announced Monday it has raised $55.8 million, is certainly finding more willing customers and partners Asia. Read More »
In the telecom and Internet worlds, it’s standard to re-route data over different lines when one path is overloaded. But not so much, when it comes to the power grid. However, a newly-emerged startup called Varentec, backed by Khosla Ventures, is looking to change all that. Read More »
Nanosolar, which has struggled for years to fulfill its promise as the next major thin-film solar manufacturer, announced Thursday it has a new CEO. Eugenia Corrales, who has been the startup’s head of engineering and operations, is taking over the chief executive post effective immediately. Read More »
If you follow solar news, chances are you’ve heard of Dow’s solar shingles — a more aesthetic way to put panels on rooftops. Well, according to the founder and CEO of thin film solar startup NuvoSun, Dave Pearce, NuvoSun is the latest producer of Dow’s solar … Read More »
While so many startups in the U.S. and Germany have been trying to build commercial-scale businesses off of making solar panels made of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS), really only one is making strides at any kind of scale: Japan’s Solar Frontier. Read More »
First Solar has broken its own record. The company announced Tuesday that it’s able to produce a thin-film solar panel that can convert 14.4 percent of the sunlight that hits it into electricity. The new record exceeds the 13.4 percent it achieved last year. Read More »
Solar service provider Sungevity under went some serious expansion in 2011 as it began to target the East Coast and overseas, and lined up Lowe’s as an investor and partner. Now following that growth, the startup has started raising a new funding round of $40.8 million. Read More »
Here is a cautionary tale about solar and fraud: the California Public Utilities voted to ban a solar installer from the state’s popular incentive program after finding that the installer had submitted documents with forged signatures. Read More »
What is going on with AQT Solar? The silicon Valley CIGS startup announced on Thursday it has raised $18.7 million, but it doesn’t seem to have met some of the big goals it had set back in 2010. Read More »
Lithium-sulfur battery maker Sion Power said in a government filing near Christmas that it had raised $50 million from an unnamed investor. Now the mystery is over. The company on Thursday revealed that the equity came from chemical giant BASF. Read More »
Scientists have been turning to nature for ideas to advance research. Solar can benefit from that, too. Researchers at MIT saw ingenuity in a sunflower’s petal arrangement and came up with a design for solar power plants that minimize land use and increase energy output. Read More »
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