HelioVolt to finally auction off assets from its solar factory
Everything must go
The obituaries for thin film solar startup HelioVolt were written about a year ago, when the thirteen-year-old company — after over $200…
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The obituaries for thin film solar startup HelioVolt were written about a year ago, when the thirteen-year-old company — after over $200…
Here’s the 13 biggest things I paid attention to this year around next-generation energy, sustainability, and resource management. Oh heck, let’s just keep calling it cleantech.
Beleaguered solar startup Nanosolar has opened up the auction of its assets and solar manufacturing equipment. The fate is similar to many next-gen solar manufacturing startups, and represents large losses for investors.
The struggle isn’t over yet for solar manufacturers, solar company executives said during interviews at the major trade show, Intersolar, in San Francisco last week.
Nanosolar is winding itself down as the once-promising thin film solar startup sells off its German assembly factory to an unnamed Swiss investor, and is holding an auction for the rest of its assets in August.
The pain of the down round. According to DowJones VentureWire, Nanosolar closed its most funding at a pre-money valuation of $50 million, which was a massive drop from a valuation of over $2 billion years earlier.
Solar Frontier, the largest manufacturer of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar panels, announced Wednesday that it’s shipped 13.2MW to NRG Solar (s NRG), which is evolving from being a buyer of solar power projects to a developer.
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.
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 shingles
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Western Digital is introducing a new powerline home networking adapter today that’s specifically pitched as a way to get video into the living room. The WD Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit could be a good fit for people with Internet-ready TVs and set-top boxes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 cells.
Where’s the innovation in solar these days? Here’s three young and stealthy solar startups that have been turning heads this week.
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.
Martin Roscheisen, the outspoken exec that had been leading thin-film solar firm Nanosolar as its CEO over the past eight years, is…
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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…
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The CEO of Nanosolar, Martin Roscheisen, wants to tell everyone that his thin-film solar startup can make tube-shaped solar panels similar to…
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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 than the lights at the Pepsi Center this week.
The other day, we covered the winners in this year’s Extend Firefox contest, which is Mozilla’s annual effort to recognize the best…
Thin-film solar maker Nanosolar was already one of the more well-funded startups in cleantech with at least $150 million behind it. But…
OptiSolar is a thin film solar maker with massive claims, like a 550 MW photovoltaic farm in San Luis Obispo County that…
The hoard of companies rushing to build solar power plants in the U.S. deserts has one big hang-up — there’s just too…
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Satellite radio enthusiasts are up in arms over previously undisclosed limitations in the otherwise nifty Sirius S50 portable satellite radio player. It…
Desktop search tool, Blinkx is out with version 2.0. Paul K has come around and likes what the tiny company is doing…