Swedish thin film solar manufacturer startup Midsummer is taking a cue from optical disc manufacturing for its solar panels, but is facing a difficult solar market. Read more »
Another thin film solar company stumbles. Global Solar appears to be a casualty of an imbalance of supply and demand that has persisted for two years and knocked out dozens of solar manufacturers worldwide. Read more »
A regional winner of the Cleantech Open hopes to win over investors with an idea of designing factory equipment to make super efficient solar cells. But given the dark clouds that hang over the solar manufacturing business, the startup will need more than luck. Read more »
After making a public appeal for investors, MiaSole has found a suitor in Hanergy, a large renewable energy company in China that just bought another solar equipment maker in Germany. The $30M sales prices of MiaSole shows how cheap solar manufacturing assets can be picked up. Read more »
Silicon Valley solar startup, SoloPower, is turning on its first large-scale factory in Oregon at a time when many solar manufacturers have crashed and burned. The factory will pave the way for the company to use a $197 million federal loan guarantee to expand its factory. Read more »
![MiaSole_0876[1]](http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/miasole_08761-e1285007255128.jpg?w=210&h=140&crop=1)
Despite raising $500 million in funding for its thin film solar panel technology, Miasole is restructuring and laying off around 200 people, according to a report. Read more »
What’s new with venture-backed solar thin film maker HelioVolt? The company has stayed fairly quiet since a big funding announcement last fall and is taking part in a small project in its hometown of Austin, Texas. Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
The solar industry has begun 2012 with some trepidation, with many on the warpath to cut costs and reduce output. These moves give the market a chance to reduce inventories and get production more in sync with demand. But recovery will likely come slowly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
Solar thin-film startup HelioVolt has lined up Korean conglomerate SK Group as an equity investor as it tries to scale up and move into mass production. SK announced Monday that it’s made an equity investment of $50 million in HelioVolt. Read more »
Silicon Valley solar thin-film startup, Stion, on Friday officially opened the door of its factory in Mississippi, marking a milestone for the company as it seeks to expand production quickly in an increasingly competitive market. Read more »
Solyndra just became a high-profile casualty of the youthful solar industry as Solyndra failed to compete successfully against larger solar rivals in a global market that depends heavily on government subsidies. Here’s what went wrong. Read more »
After getting a $535 million federal loan guarantee for building a factory, solar thin-film startup Solyndra is going out of business. Solyndra has also raised close to a billion dollars in equity and loans and said it will file Chapter 11. 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 »
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 »
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 company Solyndra, which has been on a roller coaster ride of funding and political attention over the past two years, is now slowly ramping up production at its new factory. Will it survive, meet expectations and one day turn into a solar powerhouse? Read more »
Thin film solar company HelioVolt has largely adopted a code of silence for more than a year, but it appears to be emerging from the cocoon. The company has borrowed $8.5 million in debt and begun to tout its technology again. 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 thin films have to be cheap, and that mandate makes it difficult for startups to be profitable. In fact, these alternatives to silicon solar panels are on average 12 percent cheaper, said Paula Mints of Navigant Consulting. Read more »
AQT Solar, which opened a factory in Silicon Valley last year, is heading to South Carolina to set up a solar cell factory that will start with 30-40 MW of annual production capacity and reach about 1,000
MW by the end of 2014. Read more »
This year just hasn’t panned out for Solyndra. The company will close its first factory, delay expanding its gleaming new factory and lay off dozens of employees in order to cut costs and compete with low-cost solar panel makers, mostly from China. Read more »
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 »
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 »
After years of talking about flexible, light-weight solar thin film material that can drape over roofs, manufacturers are finally starting to deliver. SoloPower is announcing on Tuesday that its first flexible solar panel has gotten UL certification, which is required for installation in many U.S. regions. 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 »
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 Juwi with 8.5 megawatts of solar panels. 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 »
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 at […] 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 $190 million loan guarantee […] 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 less than […] Read more »
Ausra Scales Back Solar Plans: Solar startup Ausra has abandoned plans to build massive solar-thermal power plants in favor of smaller, cheaper units because of a lack of financing. — CNET’s Green Tech More Money, More Problems?: Congress plans to put $10 billion or more in […] 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 fully […] 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. This deal is part […] Read more »
For all those that have been waiting to catch a glimpse of how Nanosolar has been printing its next-generation thin film solar cells, here’s some eye candy for you. The company, which started manufacturing in just December, put up this video clip of what the company […] Read more »
