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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Thin film solar startup SoloPower continues to fund-raise, amid a difficult market for next-gen solar manufacturers. According to a filing, SoloPower has just raised $20 million in debt and options that will help provide fuel for the company’s factory to mass-produce its solar panels. Read More »
India wants a lot of solar energy, and it’s getting a lot of financial help from the U.S.. The Export-Import Bank has provided a $3.7 million loan to a project developer to build a 2 MW project in India using MiaSole’s thin films. Read More »
Most of the oil giants have made small investments in cleantech and Chevron’s investment arm, Chevron Technology Ventures, was no exception. Bu Chevron has been moving away from making any cleantech investments, and hasn’t invested in a cleantech startup in two years, according to its President. Read More »
Sometimes tech trends end up disrupting huge industries, like when the idea of Skype and free web calls, collided with the phone companies. However, sometimes tech ideas have all the makings of these kind of disruptions but ultimately end up flaming out. Here’s why: Read More »
What can you do when profits are hard to come by and your targeted market hasn’t taken off? For Ascent Solar Technologies, that means selling a stake of the company and licensing its technology to a Chinese conglomerate. Read More »
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So-called “third-generation” ultra-thin film solar company Solexant has amassed another $23.47 million in equity from investors, according to a filing, and at the same time has reportedly abandoned a $25 million loan from the state of Oregon. Read More »
And now for the clear dip that we’ve all been waiting for. According to a report out on Wednesday morning from Dow Jones VentureSource, with analysis by Ernst & Young, cleantech venture capital investing dropped 44 percent to $1.1 billion. Read More »
We stopped by one of the first Chevy dealers in the country, American Chevrolet of Modesto, Calif., that has installed a solar canopy and Volt charging stations. Check out the photos and what we’ve learned about the project. Read More »
SoloPower, which has gotten a federal loan guarantee offer to build a solar panel factory in Oregon, is now aiming for a close to $44 million equity round and has so far lined up about $15 million, according to a filing Wednesday. Read More »
After 10 years of technology development and lining up investors including Intel, solar thin film company Sulfurcell has retooled its business plan that includes a name change, a technology shift and a focus beyond selling solar panels, company executives said Thursday. Read More »
TenKsolar, whose wave-like solar electric system design is a radical departure from conventional solar panels, is looking to close a round of funding in about two months, the startup’s founder and president, Dallas Meyer, told us. Read More »
Intel is known for its ability to roll out chips speedily in giant factories. Can that knowledge help a solar startup? MiaSole announced Tuesday that it has enlisted the chip giant to help the company scale up its thin-film solar production. Read More »
Has Solaria finally hit its stride? The company is now on a path to expand production, and later this morning, it’s scheduled to celebrate the new dig with big-name guests such as California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sierra Club’s executive director Mike Brune. Read More »
Greentech investment trends in the first quarter of 2011 either signal a record-setting expansion for the industry in 2011, or retrenchment in the face of economic and political headwinds — depending on how you look at the numbers. Read More »
Greentech VC hit $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2011, the second-highest quarter on record. Is that a sign of renewed investor confidence, or a sign that greentech IPOs are weak? Read More »
Developers of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar panels may be finally making that leap to mass production, but they have a lot of catching up to do to be competitive. An NREL expert and Morgan Stanley analyst outlines some of the technical and market challenges. Read More »
Solar companies have seen their stocks riding high so far this year. But that ride wont’ last forever. Here is a list of events and policies that could move the stocks in 2011. Read More »
2011 will be a make or break year for many of the next-generation of thin film solar startups that are using the material copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) to make solar cells. Close to a dozen companies are aiming to either ramp up, or move into, production. Read More »
While many Silicon Valley thin-film solar companies have finally moved into commercial production, here comes Solar Frontier, a division of Japanese oil refiner Showa Shell, who has leapt over everyone to open a near-gigawatt factory and has drawn customers such as GE. Read More »
Venture capitalists have been bemoaning the challenges of investing in solar hardware makers, but some haven’t given up. Sulfurcell, for one, announced Monday that it’s gotten €18.8 million ($25 million) from investors such as Intel Capital to market its second-generation thin films. Read More »
Solar panel startup Stion plans to build a 500MW factory, potentially raise between $100 million to $150 million in an IPO in 2012, and fulfill at least 500MW of sales contracts, CEO Chet Farris tells us. Read More »
This year saw some improvements in public market investors’ appetite for cleantech companies, but not enough to make it a good year. As always, the hopes are that 2011 will prove a better one. Check out our picks of top 10 IPO candidates. Read More »
When Walmart decides to invest in emerging green technologies it offers considerable validation. That’s certainly the intention behind Walmart’s announcement that it will pay for solar electricity from installations that use thin film solar panels from MiaSole and First Solar and are installed by SolarCity. Read More »
Global Solar on Tuesday unveiled its new flexible solar panel that can be integrated into roofing membranes. The idea is that buildings and roofs can be built with the solar materials weaved right into them, lowering the cost and the time of the solar installation. Read More »
By Ucilia Wang
Aug. 25, 2010, 11:02am PT
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UPDATE: As it turns out, Juwi Solar really likes MiaSole. The German power project developer has inked a multiyear, 600-megawatt agreement that calls for MiaSole to ship 50 megawatts in 2011 and more in the following years. Read More »
This year is shaping up to be a pretty good one for MiaSole, which began to disclose its customers earlier this year after spending roughly two years to get the manufacturing technology right. The Kleiner Perkins-backed company on Tuesday said it has a deal to supply … Read More »
By Jeff St. John
Aug. 17, 2010, 8:05am PT
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Can cleantech companies cut millions of dollars from their capital needs by retrofitting old chip equipment to turn out brand-new products? If the advantages are anything close to what AQT Solar and Planar Energy claim, it very well could be the start of a new trend. Read More »
The march of the chipmakers into solar continues. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — a heavyweight in contract chipmaking — announced Wednesday that it has signed a licensing agreement and has invested $50 million in Silicon Valley thin-film solar startup Stion. Read More »
The story of high efficiency solar photovoltaic panel maker SunPower puts the whole clean energy landscape into perspective. After 25 years in the business the company has been producing solar panels commercially for only about five years. Here’s our photos from the factory tour. Read More »
Solar startup Solexant, which is sometimes stealthy, and sometimes not-so-stealthy, is gearing up to start talking a whole lot more. That’s because according to a filing the company, which was spun out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is in the process of raising $65 million. Read More »
The semiconductor industry is the perfect training ground for leaders of the next generation of greentech startups. It takes a lot of capital and production know-how to scale chip manufacturing successfully — something thin-film solar, LED, and battery startups desperately need to learn how to do. Read More »
News coverage of Obama’s visit to Solyndra’s factory have been calling the DOE’s loan guarantee to Solyndra an example of how successful the Department of Energy’s clean power investment programs can be. But is it really? Read More »
Thin film startup MiaSole was once the posterchild of the over-hype of the CIGS solar world. Now its ramping up production, planning a new factory, developing next-gen solar shingles, and looking to hit a cost of fifty cents per watt for solar manufacturing. Read More »
Solar firms like eSolar rely on computing to accurately set up and position mirrors in the deserts. But thin film solar maker Applied Quantum Technology (AQT) is looking to computers for an entirely different purpose: to adapt hard drive production machines to produce solar … Read More »
Where’s the innovation in solar these days? Here’s three young and stealthy solar startups that have been turning heads this week. Read More »
Oil giant Chevron has an itch to test out early stage solar technology. This morning Chevron plans to show off a solar test bed in Bakersfield, Calif., dubbed Project Brightfield, that will use seven “emerging pre-commercial” solar photovoltaic technologies. The companies providing the technology range from … Read More »
OptiSolar is a thin film solar maker with massive claims, like a 550 MW photovoltaic farm in San Luis Obispo County that it says is in the works. And the Hayward, California-based startup appears to be raising loads of cash to try to implement its … Read More »
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