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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
When PayPal went public in 2002, then executive vice president Reid Hoffman, spent some of his winnings on investing in an early round of Silicon Valley’s first solar thin film startup Nanosolar. Will the investment ever pay off? 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 »
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 »
While many of the next-gen thin film solar companies are in a make-or-break stage of ramping up to high volume production, a good deal of these companies don’t seem to have much trouble finding customers. Nanosolar says its scored a 1 GW deal with European utilities. Read More »
More Must Reads
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 »
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 morning the industry darling announced that it will boost capacity to a whopping 2.7 GW by 2012, by building two new factories, one in the U.S. and one in Vietnam. That’s double its current annual production of 1.4 GW. Read More »
After 8 years, hundreds of millions of dollars raised, and a colorful CEO who made a lot of claims, Nanosolar is finally revealing its cell production plans: expand a 50 MW line to 115 MW by 2011, and 1 GW within 4 to 5 years. 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 »
Picking winners and losers is always a dicey exercise, but Lux Research took that plunge and issued a report this week, which points to likely revenue winners and IPO candidates over the coming year. The names that popped out include Amonix, Enphase Energy and Abound Solar. 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 »
You know a problem has gotten out of hand when there’s a task force created to address it. Today PG&E and partners announced the creation of the “Smart Grid Task Force” that will tackle an area that has been sorely needed for the smart grid: public … 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 »
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 »
Thin film solar firm Nanosolar says it will be able to save tens of millions of dollars, and expand its business in California and create new jobs, thanks to a new manufacturing tax incentive bill signed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday. Read More »
Martin Roscheisen, the outspoken exec that had been leading thin-film solar firm Nanosolar as its CEO over the past eight years, is out. The company, which in September moved into high volume production of its thin-film solar material at its factory in San Jose, Calif., … Read More »
Thin film solar maker Nanosolar pulled back the kimono a bit last month, discussing some tech advances and demonstrating that it’s moved into high volume production. And now it’s time for more details about partnership announcements, considering the big solar conference Solar Power … Read More »
Thin film solar startup Nanosolar’s quiet period is over. This morning the seven-year-old company, in a flurry of press releases announced that it has started high volume production of its thin film solar material at its factory in San Jose, Calif., and has finished construction … Read More »
Thin-film solar startup Nanosolar isn’t exactly known for being shy. The San Jose, Calif.-based company has attracted plenty of attention –- as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in funding -– for claims that its technology can produce highly efficient copper-indium-gallium-diselenide panels for … Read More »
Back before the stimulus package or the Waxman-Markey bill, when no one was sure whether tax credits for renewable energy would be re-upped or allowed to fade away, U.S. mayors decided to adopt their own climate policy. In signing on to the U.S. … Read More »
Tube-shaped thin-film solar maker Solyndra‘s been streaming a series of good news lately, including a much-coveted Department of Energy loan guarantee, a customer installation and various partnerships and sales contracts. The company on Thursday added to that list a $189 million … Read More »
The CEO of Nanosolar, Martin Roscheisen, wants to tell everyone that his thin-film solar startup can make tube-shaped solar panels similar to a certain other thin film startup — which he doesn’t name, but is pretty clearly Solyndra — but that he doesn’t … Read More »
The CEO of thin-film startup Nanosolar, Martin Roscheisen, is an outspoken guy — so of course he has something to say about how the credit crunch will effect the solar industry. He says in a blog post this morning that solar companies with capital … Read More »
Thin-film solar startup Konarka today opened its new manufacturing plant in New Bedford, Mass., which will have a production capacity of 1 gigawatt per year. The 250,000-square-foot plant was previously an advanced printing facility for Polaroid, so Konarka has retrofitted much of the old … Read More »
By Craig Rubens
Aug. 30, 2008, 12:30pm PT
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V-P nominations and the Democrat’s supposedly green convention clogged the airwaves this week, but what does it all mean for cleantech? Here’s our take on the running mates and the other headlines from the week. 10 Things to Know About Sarah Palin and Energy: Presumptive Republican … Read More »
First Solar competitor AVA Solar says it has raised a round of $104 million to produce its thin film solar photovoltaics. The news comes on the heels of the massive $300 million round announced this week by thin film solar startup Nanosolar. Solar funding is hotter … Read More »
Thin-film solar maker Nanosolar was already one of the more well-funded startups in cleantech with at least $150 million behind it. But this morning Nanosolar’s CEO Martin Roscheisen writes on the company blog that Nanosolar has raised $300 million in an oversubscribed equity financing … Read More »
Less than a month after Green Energy Technologies signed a deal for a thin-film solar module production line from Applied Materials, the company says it has already received requests for four times its expected capacity next year, Bloomberg reports. The solar silicon-wafer maker, … 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 »
Thin-film solar technology, or thin layers of photovoltaics that can be printed onto flexible surfaces, will make up 28 percent of the solar market by 2012, says a report out this morning from Lux Research. Thin-film solar technology, which is being developed with materials … Read More »
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