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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 »

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 »

 
 

Greentech stocks crash in market sell-off, too

Tech stocks took a beating on Monday morning, the first day of trading after Standard & Poor downgraded the credit ratings of credit agencies. At the same time, greentech stocks — from solar to biofuels to smart grid — fell alongside the weak macro economic news. Read More »

Solar tube maker Solyndra raising more funds

Solyndra Solar Panels Ready To Ship

Solyndra, the thin film solar tube maker, has been planning on raising even more funds this year, and according to a filing on Thursday, has raised another $10.66 million in options, warrants or rights to acquire another security. Read More »

GE To Ramp Up Thin Film Solar Dramatically

The mystery’s over. GE apparently is serious about building a thin film solar business and the New York Times is reporting that GE plans to announce on Thursday that it will build a factory to produce 400 MW worth of thin film solar panels per year. … Read More »

GE to Challenge First Solar in Thin-Film Panels

GE is gunning for First Solar’s turf with a new line of thin-film solar panels, saying it hopes to grow its solar business to match its $6 billion-a-year wind power dominance. Read More »

From Spandex to Solar: DuPont Poised for PV Growth

Look at a solar panel and you might think of its manufacturer or installer, or maybe – if you’re a true solar geek – the company that made the cells inside the panel. But when Marc Doyle, global business director for DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions, looks … Read More »

Companies like Applied Materials and Oerlikon are building businesses out of selling so-called “turnkey” (ready to use) thin-film solar manufacturing equipment to would-be solar developers. The idea is that instead of developing the technology itself, a solar maker can just buy the gear and start … Read More »

An idle 320-acre Ford Motor Co. plant, which during its 52 years of operation assembled 6.6 million Lincoln Continentals, Ford Thunderbirds and other vehicles before halting operations two years ago, is getting reincarnated as a renewable energy equipment manufacturing park. In a symbolic win for those … Read More »

Stealthy solar startup SkyWatch Energy is in the process of raising $3.2 million in its first round of equity financing, according to a Securities and Exchanges Commission filing in June. Khosla Ventures this week divulged it invested in the company as a side note … Read More »

Boosting Cell Phone Batteries With Solar Plastic

As we all know, cell phones no longer just make calls — many act as web devices, navigators, cameras, music players, game consoles, and in weirder circumstances carpenter’s levels and whoopee cushions. But as consumers have called on their phones to do more than … Read More »

Four-year-old thin-film solar startup SoloPower has so far kept a low profile, with only four press releases posted on its site since 2007 and none before then. But earlier this month, the San Jose, Calif.-based company said it was applying for a … Read More »

More Must Reads

Despite the best efforts of solar firms to reduce cost and raise the efficiency of solar material, many in the industry still find themselves chasing thin-film solar darling First Solar, which makes high-efficiency cadmium-telluride solar film panels. In particular, Oerlikon Solar and Applied … 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 »

A couple weeks ago we received an email query from an exec at an environmental group wondering about the legality and ethics of solar maker OptiSolar incorporating yet-to-be-approved Bureau of Land Management land applications into its price when solar giant First Solar agreed to acquire the … 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 »

Firing up its first full-scale factory today, the solar startup known until last month as AVA Solar has a new name — Abound Solar — but a tried-and-true target: Beat sector-leading First Solar on cost. When we covered Abound’s massive $104 million equity financing … Read More »

Teaming up with fellow electronics powerhouse Panasonic wasn’t enough for Sanyo Electric. And for Nippon Oil Corp., a toe-dip into solar for propelling cargo ships was only the beginning. Today the Japan-based photovoltaic maker and oil distributor launched a 50-50 joint … Read More »

China’s Qaidam Basin could become the equivalent of the Mojave Desert in terms of solar power projects, if new plans to build a 1-gigawatt solar power photovoltaic farm in China come to fruition. While utilities and startups have sited the Southern California desert for some of … Read More »

We’ve brought you the victories and the disappointments of the year in cleantech, and now here’s a top 10 list that’s a little more personal: The top 10 Earth2Tech stories of 2008. The list is a combo of reader favorites — page views and … Read More »

Japan will renew subsidies for residential solar power equipment next month, officials with the country’s ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced this week. The $99.6 million package of incentives pledged for the first quarter of 2009 came not a day too soon for electronics … Read More »

SolarCity, a solar installer and financier based in Foster City, Calif., has installed one of the country’s first thin-film solar projects on a residential roof. The company installed 2.4 kilowatts worth of First Solar cadmium-telluride panels on a home in San Mateo, Calif., … Read More »

EIA Cuts Carbon Emissions Forecast: The Energy Information Administration now expects U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 to be 9.4 percent less than forecast last year. — Reuters California Launches Green Chemistry Initiative: State officials unveiled a plan this week to disclose the environmental footprint … Read More »

Thin-film manufacturer Global Solar Energy has flipped the switch on its 750-kilowatt solar project in Tucson, Ariz., which it claims is the world’s largest system using solar cells made of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide. The company, which makes CIGS solar cells, announced this week that the project is … Read More »

Tubular solar startup Solyndra today announced a $320 million deal with Carlisle Energy Services, a newly formed division of Carlisle Construction Materials. The deal is for 100 megawatts of panels over five years which will be installed with Carlisle’s reflective roofing membrane. Read More »

Today Oerlikon announced that is has unveiled its newest technology, “Amorph High Performance,” which adds a zinc oxide layer to the cells, boosting efficiency nearly a full percentage while also increasing fab capacity by 50 percent. “More and more you’re going to see an Intel-inside approach … Read More »

Intel Capital says it has invested $20 million in Chinese thin-film solar provider Trony Solar, and has signed an agreement to invest in a large-scale electricity storage specialist in China NP Holdings Ltd. Read More »

HelioVolt, a well-financed startup that has been working on its thin-film solar material for the past seven years, is holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony today for its first factory in its home city of Austin, Texas. Read More »

Now that solar startup Solyndra has come out into the sun, we’re slowly getting more details on the company’s technology and business. Today Solyndra announced that it has signed a sales deal with German solar integrator GeckoLogic GmbH valued at $250 million. … Read More »

Innovalight, a thin-film solar startup developing photovoltaic silicon ink, has received $5 million in debt financing from Leader Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. The startup looks to be ramping up for production as it previously announced it had raised $5 million in equipment … Read More »

Secretive thin-film solar startup Solyndra unveiled for the first time today its solar module design for commercial rooftops and funding totaling more than $600 million. The company says its design can cut the cost of installing solar rooftops in half and reduce installation time … 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 »

Japanese consumer electronics maker and solar giant Sharp plans to boost its thin film manufacturing capacity six fold. The company is still working on reaching its goal of 1 gigawatt of production capacity by 2010 but Toshishige Hamano, a vice president in Sharp’s solar-battery division, … Read More »

The future of the solar power industry may be bright, but solar also has a dark side — some thin-film photovoltaic solar cells contain hazardous substances like Cadmium that can pose a health risk if the solar panel is simply thrown out after it’s done soaking … Read More »

In the past couple weeks there’s been news of hundreds of millions pumped into thin-film solar startups, with both Nanosolar and AVA Solar announcing massive rounds. Well, it’s not over yet, folks. This morning Venture Wire says that thin film solar player SoloPower … Read More »

Is Austin-based thin-film solar startup HelioVolt getting close to producing its solar material made of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS)? Sounds like it — the company just sent out invites for a “ribbon-cutting ceremony” for its factory on the morning of Friday, Oct. 24, followed … Read More »

The idea behind Optony, a year-old startup that is working on combining thin film solar cells with a solar concentrating system, is to merge two of the solar industry’s low-cost options to produce solar power prices that rival grid parity. At least that’s the … 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 »

The intersection of the semiconductor and solar industries has yielded yet another investment — this time it’s from Intel’s VC arm Intel Capital, which is investing $12.5 million into Voltaix, a manufacturer of chemicals and gases used in both chip and solar … Read More »

Thin-film darling First Solar said it will build a 10 megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant for power company Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of California utility Sempra Energy [SRE]. Sempra Generation said the solar plant will be built on 80 acres next to a … Read More »

Funding thin-film solar isn’t just a popular idea among VCs; public funds have been financing research for years. Xunlight is the latest, announcing yesterday that it has received $4.9 million from the Ohio Research Commercialization Program. When we heard from the Toledo, Ohio-based Xunlight … Read More »

Innovalight, a thin-film solar startup developing photovoltaic silicon ink, has received $5 million in equipment lease financing from ATEL Ventures. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup has a 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., and this financing could help the company move into production. … 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 »

IBM, with years of experience designing chips and LCD displays, is jumping into the solar sector — but not just silicon-based solar. Big Blue has announced a new joint effort with chip gear maker Tokyo Ohka Kogyo to develop thin-film solar panels based … Read More »

We were a bit surprised when GE announced last September it was acquiring a minority interest in a thin-film solar company called PrimeStar Solar. Well, it looks like GE was more than pleased with that investing move because yesterday afternoon GE … Read More »

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