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Organic solar thin film maker Konarka files for bankruptcy

Ucilia Wang — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:00:03 +0000

Konarka Technologies, a maker of organic solar thin films, said Friday it’s going bankrupt, an announcement that may not be so surprising to many who have watched and waited for the venture-backed company to try to build a viable business.

The Massachusetts company filed for Chapter 7 and plans to liquidate its assets to pay back creditors. The company developed organic thin films that it wanted to see installed as part of building façades, and despite raising close to $200 million by our last count, it struggled to find success.

The fact that Konarka, founded in 2001, has lasted this long has been puzzling to some. The low efficiency of organic thin films – the company was selling products that could convert only a few percent of the sunlight that falls on them into electricity as of last year – and the difficulties of finding buyers in the building design and construction market have been persistent challenges for Konarka over the years.

Konarka’s technology used a photo-reactive material printed onto plastic, and they are quite different from the silicon or cadmium-telluride semiconductors used in conventional solar cells today. Instead of encasing the films in glass like other solar panels on the market, Konarka makes its films in protective polymer layers so that they are flexible.

“Konarka has been unable to obtain additional financing, and given its current financial condition, it is unable to continue operations. This is a tragedy for Konarka’s shareholders and employees and for the development of alternative energy in the United States,” said Howard Berke, chairman and CEO of Konarka, in a statement.

Konarka was able to sell its organic thin films for lining umbrellas and shoulder bags, but it wasn’t clear whether these sales and shipments amounted to any significant volumes. Konarka marketed its thin films to architects and builders in the building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) market, which has barely emerged and is a tough market to crack. Architects like the idea of adding eco-friendly features, but they tend to balk at the added expense and worry about the logistics of embedding, operating and replacing electrical equipment that isn’t likely to last as long as the buildings. The lackluster housing market in the past few years also hasn’t helped.

In 2010, the company raised $20 million from Konica Minolta, which wanted build a manufacturing joint venture in Japan. Konarka had lined up many other investors, too, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Good Energies, 3i, Mackenzie Financial Corp., Pegasus Capital, Asenqua Ventures, New Enterprise Associates , Vanguard Ventures, Chevron Ventures, Massachusetts Green Energy Fund, NGEN Partners, Angeleno Group and Total, the French oil and gas giant who invested $45 million in 2008.

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Boosting Cell Phone Batteries With Solar Plastic

Jennifer Kho — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:00:28 +0000

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 ever before, the demands on those handsets’ batteries also have increased, and quickly used battery life has become a common source of grumbling. That sticking point provides an opportunity for Solarmer. The El Monte, Calif.-based startup hopes to extend mobile phone battery life with strips of organic thin-film solar plastic, which it plans to bring to market in the next 18 months.

Instead of pursuing solar panels on rooftops and ground-mounted solar farms, Solarmer is targeting new consumer-electronics applications for its plastic solar panels, starting with cell phones and charging-enabled laptop bags. While this isn’t a new idea — several solar manufacturers like Konarka Technologies and G24 Innovations already offer solar chargers and bags — Solarmer hopes it can boost what’s a niche market today with organic thin-film plastic that it claims can convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently than its competitors, with a lower manufacturing cost.

The company in July announced that its plastic solar cells and panels, which were originally developed at the University of California at Los Angeles and combined with some technology licensed from the University of Chicago, had achieved world record conversion efficiencies. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory certified a 1-square-centimeter cell at 6.77 percent efficiency, and the Newport Corp. certified a 6-square-inch panel at 3.9 percent efficiency. Dina Lozofsky, vice president for strategic asset management at Solarmer, said the company expects to reach 4 percent efficiency by the time it launches its first product, with manufacturing costs of less than $1 per watt.

The films won’t boost battery life very much: One hour of charging in the sun would give customers an extra 8 to 10 minutes of talk time, Lazofsky said, adding that the film also would trickle charge the phones — albeit at a slower rate — in indoor light. But the company expects the pieces of film, which will attach to phones’ backs, to start at only $2 to $5 per phone, then drop from there. At that price, Solarmer believes, the films will sell.

The company also thinks its panels’ appearance will give it an edge. The films can be cut into any shape and size, and can be made in different colors including blues, greens, pinks and reds, though some colors convert sunlight more efficiently than others, Lazofsky said.

Solarmer already has won some backers for its technology. Since it was founded in 2006, the company has raised $10 million from founders and partners, and it’s using the money to build a pilot plant expected to start up in the first quarter of next year. The pilot factory, expected to have a production capacity of 1-5 MW, will begin producing a small number of panels for sale by the end of 2010, Lazofsky said. Solarmer plans to enter full-scale production by the first quarter of 2011, and is seeking a second $10 million round to help build that first commercial factory.

But Solarmer has some challenges to work out first. Perhaps the biggest of these is the short lifetime of its panels. That’s long been a problem for organic-photovoltaic technologies, which tend to last “at most, a couple of years, and at worst, a couple of hours,” said Jenny Chase, lead solar analyst at U.K.-based research firm New Energy Finance. In addition, it has proven difficult to encapsulate films on flexible substrates, such as plastic, to keep air and water away from them, she said.

Right now, Solarmer’s panels degrade to about 80 percent of their performance after about a year, falling short of the 18 months that potential customers have said they want, Lazofsky said. Solarmer is looking for partners to help improve its encapsulation so that it can reach that goal, she said, adding that while solutions are available today, they are cost-prohibitive.

The panels will have to come very cheaply to justify their small boost in talk time, said Chase, who expects organic PVs for consumer electronics to remain a niche market. “It’s the same market niche G24i is after, and Konarka’s been trying to get there for years,” she said. “It’s probably further off than it looks.”

Solarmer has its eye on a potentially bigger market, as well. In three to five years, the company hopes to expand from consumer electronics to building-integrated PV. It’s developing transparent solar films that could generate power from windows, Lazofsky said. Still, windows last longer than cell phones, and the company will have to significantly expand its panels’ lifetime to tap into that market.

Images courtesy of Solarmer, the bag and phone are artist renderings, not photos of actual products.

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What to Do After the Election? NewTeeVee Live!

Liz Gannes — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:45:15 +0000

A crappy economy, a momentous election? We excuse you for having other things on your mind. But come Nov. 13, if you’re a reader of this site, we sure hope you’ll plop your butt down in San Francisco for our NewTeeVee Live conference. We’re even doing an election special price of $500 on tickets this week, so buy now.

The show is looking to be amazing, with a star-studded cast of speakers and a fascinating list of attendees. Get your ticket here.

The headliners on our schedule are:

Anthony Zuiker – Executive Producer, TV Show CSI
Reed Hastings – CEO, Netflix
Jason Kilar – CEO, Hulu
David Verklin – CEO, Canoe Ventures
Alexis Rapo – V-P, Digital Media, Disney-ABC Television Group
Blake Krikorian – CEO, Sling Media
Tania Yuki – Senior Product Manager, comScore

And our panel topics:

Live webcasts of major events: The inside story
Bridging the gap between television and online
Managed vs. unmanaged content
The truth about online video advertising
Last but not least: VCs evaluate the day and the opportunities they see

And appearances by breakout video stars of 2008:

Michael Buckley of What the Buck
Lucas Cruikshank of Fred
Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing TV
Felicia Day of The Guild
Jay Smooth of ill doctrine
Brian Conley of Alive in Baghdad

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Konarka Turns On 1GW Thin-Film Solar Printing Press

Craig Rubens — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:09:33 +0000

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 printing equipment for solar fabrication and hired the technology and process engineering teams from Polaroid. The company plans to hire more than 100 additional employees as production increases toward capacity over the next 2-3 years.

The printing press is already humming and commercial production of Lowell, Mass.-based Konarka’s branded organic photovoltaic “Power Plastic” will begin in earnest in the first quarter of 2009, the company tells us. Konarka’s special sauce lies with its organic solar panels, which it says are able to absorb a much wider spectrum of light than other thin films, allowing for higher efficiencies and even indoor applications. Now that it’s manufacturing product, Konarka joins Nanosolar, the poster child of thin-film solar that started inking panels on a 1-gigawatt, $1.65-million solar printer late last year.

A slew of other startups have been stacking up funding in preparation for their own capital-intensive manufacturing expansions. AVA Solar raised $104 million this summer and plans to start manufacturing at a 200-megawatt plant sometime this year. HelioVolt and delay-beset Miasole have both also raised more than $100 million. HelioVolt plans to start selling its solar material in early 2009, and is holding a ribbon cutting for its Austin plant this month.

Meanwhile, rumors circulate about the stealthier thin-film players’ production plans. Solyndra was reportedly looking for $350 million in August for a manufacturing plant but failing that could be looking to restructure. We’re also still waiting for the official word from SoloPower, which has reportedly raised $200 million for a 100-megawatt-per-year plant.

Between the market crash and the projected end of the silicon shortage it could be harder for thin-film players to get project financing for big, expensive manufacturing plants, potentially giving those like Konarka and Nanosolar who have now gotten their plants up and running an important lead.

Images courtesy of Konarka.

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WoW 2.0: Lord of the Rings, Everquest Creator Challenge Warcraft

Wagner James Au — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:29:11 +0000

So there’s two new fantasy MMOs with high name recongition launching now. Only three years ago, gamers and the industry would greet that announcement with at least a modicum of enthusiasm. Now the general reaction is more likely to be, “But… why bother?”

Sony Online’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes went on sale yesterday, and the name recognition comes from its head developer: Brad McQuaid, who was also development lead on Sony’s Everquest, once the most popular US-based MMO for nearly five years. Now out in open Beta, Lord of the Rings Online has even more name recognition for obvious reasons.

With such big guns at play, you’d think World of Warcraft finally has some serious competition. You’d probably be wrong. At least one of the games is attempting some very interesting Web 2.0 implementations which may give it some traction, but that aside, I very much doubt Vivendi/Blizzard will need to worry about the market dominance of their franchise any time soon.

Why? Because by now, we’ve surely reached the absolute market limit for fantasy roleplaying games. Everquest peaked in 2004 with about 550,000 subscribers— and that was back when half a million seemed like a lot. Then, of course, came World of Warcraft, surpassing that number in just a few months; it currently boasts 8 million subscribers worldwide. But there’s no reason to think that either game will gain much of an audience that’s entirely new to MMOs— more likely, they’ll just poach from that 8 million. (And conveniently, World of Warcraft just came out with an expansion that’ll keep their hardcore audience interested for at least six more months.)

On first glance, Vanguard’s only two distinguishing features (from WoW, and other MMOs that came before) is a greater emphasis on crafting and even more interesting, diplomacy. The latter bit might attract some fans of strategy games who might otherwise not play an MMO, though it’s difficult to see how that can become anything more than a niche of a niche.

Then there’s Lord of the Rings Online, but the shock there is that it doesn’t incorporate designs and imagery from the New Line Cinema films, but instead (in a wonderful IP rights entanglement), only on the original Tolkien books. That’s bound to confound fans of the Peter Jackson films— though in any case, MMOs based on successful films (Star Wars Galaxies, Matrix Online) have a poor track record. As described, LOTR Online’s gameplay seems to be an uneasy mix of traditional RPG elements (power moves, special abilities, etc.) that are just passingly related to the novels. Could end up alienating both gamers and Tolkien purists.

But Lord of the Rings Online has at least one truly innovative thing going for it, as reported on Games Radar:

A Google Maps version of Middle-earth will be accessible to subscribers. Each character you create will get his or her own page on the game’s official website, and you’ll be able to blog it. Minigames on the website will affect your real progression in (currently unspecified) ways. The site will also feature an online Wiki encyclopedia of info about the LOTR Online universe.

In other words, MMO meets Web 2.0. (Hat tip: Raph Koster, who has some thoughts on this daring move on his blog.)

Of course, this is just a very early appraisal, and GigaGamez hopes to speak with the teams behind Vanguard and LOTR Online soon, to get their take. But the cruel irony is that even if these games gained a paying audience of a million each, and became profitable in the process, many would still judge them as a failure, held against WoW’s mercilessly high standards.

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