Norway’s Thin Film gets $23M to fund printed electronics roadmap
The Norwegian printed electronics firm Thin Film – which we recently covered for its smart label partnership with Cisco-backed Evrythng – has…
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The Norwegian printed electronics firm Thin Film – which we recently covered for its smart label partnership with Cisco-backed Evrythng – has…
First Solar’s stock is smoking hot on Tuesday, soaring almost 50 percent to reach almost $40 per share. That’s quite a turn around for the solar thin film leader who had such a difficult year in 2012.
First Solar generated profits for the third quarter as it marches into new markets and carries out cost-cutting measures to compete at a time when there is an oversupply of solar panels worldwide and many of its rivals have declared losses or gone out of business.
Shortly after SoloPower announced it has started up its first commercial scale factory in Portland, Oregon, the thin film solar startup also more quietly filed a statement saying it has raised $12 million in debt.
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.
Hanergy, a Chinese solar manufacturer, has been making news lately, first with the purchase of a German solar company and then on Wednesday with a 3-year deal to make and install solar panels on Ikea’s stores on China. But who is Hanergy?
Thin film solar company Nanosolar announced on Friday that it has raised $70 million, a round which includes the previously announced $20 million. Overall Nanosolar has taken in at least $450 million since its start in 2002.
The thin film solar panel maker received the first DOE loan guarantee, planned an IPO and filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hunting for new markets has become a bigger priority for First Solar, whose executives sounded a cautious note about the market outlook on Thursday and reported declining sales and net income for the fourth quarter.
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.
First Solar’s own power generation projects have always been mounted on racks that don’t tilt throughout the day to follow the sun, but the company is exploring the use of trackers. First Solar announced Friday it has bought RayTracker for an undisclosed sum.
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.
First Solar’s big plan to eventually build 2 gigawatts of power plants in China’s Inner Mongolia has moved ahead. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with China Guangdong Nuclear Solar Energy Development Co. on Wednesday to develop the first phase, 30-megawatt project.
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.
Here are three strategies by First Solar for 2011: keeping its solar panel prices low to encourage its customers to open new markets, use its project development business to offset any drop in solar panel sales, and build new factories like mad.
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.
Can solar module producer Oerlikon inject new enthusiasm into amorphous silicon thin film technology, which until now has struggled to compete in cost and efficiency? The Swiss company hopes to do so with the launch Tuesday of a new line of factory equipment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You know the viral “Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years“? Well, what if Noah took a 4-second…
A couple weeks ago we received an email query from an exec at an environmental group wondering about the legality and ethics…
For the solar industry, these are not the sunniest of times. And startups in general are vulnerable to the ongoing financial storms…
As reported recently all over the blogosphere, the world’s first Mac-based botnet is active after infiltrating people’s systems in January by way…
Firing up its first full-scale factory today, the solar startup known until last month as AVA Solar has a new name —…
Monthly viewer stats used to be pretty boring to write. To paraphrase Jan Brady, it was always “YouTube, YouTube, YouTube!” (s GOOG)…
Massachusetts showed its appreciation for local solar startup Konarka today with $5 million in financing for manufacturing and job creation in the…
Mark Morelli, CEO of Energy Conversion Devices, sees a lot of new customers lining up for his company’s thin-film solar laminates in…
Updated: Thin-film solar developer HelioVolt won’t be shipping its commercial thin film solar material until at least early 2010, a HelioVolt spokesperson…
Teaming up with fellow electronics powerhouse Panasonic wasn’t enough for Sanyo Electric (s SANYY). And for Nippon Oil Corp.(s NPOIY), a toe-dip…
Here’s a way to draw in cleantech financing in a global credit crunch: find a country, or an emirate, that’s spending lots…
China’s Qaidam Basin could become the equivalent of the Mojave Desert in terms of solar power projects, if new plans to build…
Japan will renew subsidies for residential solar power equipment next month, officials with the country’s ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced…
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…
Thin-film manufacturer Global Solar Energy has flipped the switch on its 750-kilowatt solar project in Tucson, Ariz., which it claims is the…
There’s a new power couple in the thin-film industry. Japan’s Sharp announced plans yesterday to invest at least ¥100 billion yen ($1.05…
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.
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 to thin-film production,” Chris O’Brien, Oerlikon’s head of market development in North America, tells us.
Mobuzz, a four-year-old Madrid-based web studio, says the economic downturn has starved it of the €50,000 ($65,235) it needs each month to…
A crappy economy, a momentous election? We excuse you for having other things on your mind. But come Nov. 13, if you’re…
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.
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.
Now that solar startup Solyndra has come out into the sun, we’re slowly getting more details on the company’s technology and business.…
Innovalight, a thin-film solar startup developing photovoltaic silicon ink, has received $5 million in debt financing from Leader Ventures and Silicon Valley…
Secretive thin-film solar startup Solyndra unveiled for the first time today its solar module design for commercial rooftops and funding totaling more…
Thin-film solar startup Konarka today opened its new manufacturing plant in New Bedford, Mass., which will have a production capacity of 1…
John Rogers and his team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have figured out how to slice monocrystalline solar wafers thin enough to be flexible and partially transparent but still maintain their high solar efficiency.
Japanese consumer electronics maker and solar giant Sharp plans to boost its thin film manufacturing capacity six fold. The company is still…
NewTeeVee: The return of Monday Night Football not doing it for you? Get your cricket fix online via Willow TV. Earth2Tech: Not…
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 up the sun.
In the past couple weeks there’s been news of hundreds of millions pumped into thin-film solar startups, with both Nanosolar and AVA…
Is Austin-based thin-film solar startup HelioVolt getting close to producing its solar material made of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS)? Sounds like…
The idea behind Optony, a year-old startup that is working on combining thin film solar cells with a solar concentrating system, is…
Less than a month after Green Energy Technologies signed a deal for a thin-film solar module production line from Applied Materials, the…
The intersection of the semiconductor and solar industries has yielded yet another investment — this time it’s from Intel’s VC arm Intel…
Thin-film darling First Solar said it will build a 10 megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant for power company Sempra Generation, a subsidiary…
About a month ago, we mentioned the danger in taking your iPod, iPhone, or Mac across the northern border into Canada. Now…
Funding thin-film solar isn’t just a popular idea among VCs; public funds have been financing research for years. Xunlight is the latest,…
Innovalight, a thin-film solar startup developing photovoltaic silicon ink, has received $5 million in equipment lease financing from ATEL Ventures. The Santa…
Thin-film solar technology, or thin layers of photovoltaics that can be printed onto flexible surfaces, will make up 28 percent of the…
For all those that have been waiting to catch a glimpse of how Nanosolar has been printing its next-generation thin film solar…
IBM, with years of experience designing chips and LCD displays, is jumping into the solar sector — but not just silicon-based solar.…
We were a bit surprised when GE announced last September it was acquiring a minority interest in a thin-film solar company called…
After our computers, our cell phones are surely the most essential tool for most web workers. With our on-the-go working habits, many of us spend hours every week with the tiny phones pressed to our ears, dealing with clients and coworkers. Recently the potential health risks of cell phones are back in the news – CNN and the New York Times are among the major media that have covered this issue.
FTL Solar, which is building products embedded with thin-film solar cells, said today that it’s closed $1 million of what it hopes…
While analysts are busy haggling over First Solar’s price — is it heading up or down? — the company got a potentially…
Past WWD contributor Leo Babauta has teamed up with LifeDev’s Glen Stansberry to launch Web Warrior Tools, a new ebook publishing house.…
As I continue to see the benefits of moving more of my work and organizational tools online, it gets harder to see…
Holy Toledo, Ohio-based solar startup! Xunlight, a thin-film silicon-based solar company spun out of the University of Toledo has just announced that…
In a recent post on the company blog, Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen hinted at “near-term” plans for residential solar from the thin-film…
Growth in venture capital investing in the U.S. will continue, according to the latest figures. But venture firms are battening down the hatches to prepare for a rough 2008.
As web workers, we depend on a variety of tools: mobile phones, computers, PDAs, even (depending on how you look at it)…
There are a lot of sites that offer the ability to manage some part of your working life on the web –…
One of the benefits of being someone who gets to use a lot of different mobile devices is the conversations these devices…
I keep getting my head filled with additional thoughts and impressions of the P1620 as I continue to use it heavily and…
Ratings powerhouse Nielsen is looking to extend its tracking services into online video. According to AdAge, Nielsen’s strategy is to measure video…
Regardless of what you believe about the current state of IP networks’ ability to handle online video, delivering video and voice over…
It’s simple really and Robert McLaws has the answer at Windows-Now. Robert’s done some benchmark testing of the latest Microsoft Windows Vista…
Windows on a 3 inch touchscreen. WinCE for $108 that is.
Running the presentation
I am now settled in at the CES in Vegas and have everything I need:
I was hoping to catch this one exactly, but I’m at the Toyota dealer getting the Hybrid serviced while James got a…
This Digital Inspiration tip on DocSyncer couldn’t come at a better time for me personally. I’ve been writing all of my non-jkOTR…
I had the pleasure of attending the Winnie Awards down in L.A. this past weekend. The show, created by Irina Slutsky of…
Long time readers know that I thrive on music throughout the day and that my favorite free music service is Pandora. Rather…
NBCU Signs Up for TiVo’s Ratings Service; the peacock to get second-by-second viewer research and will implement interactive ad tags. (The Wall…
This so called “iPhone killer” is probably going to kill itself. The Good Based on the LG Viewty’s microsite alone, the most…
You guys just can’t stop cutting deals for one day, can you? We should be sleeping but there’s too much news on…
Fliqz, a company we criticized earlier this year for its me-too offering and terrible design, has emerged into a respectable player in…
The folks over at the Participatory Culture Foundation are gearing up for the 1.0 release of their Miro video player, formerly known…
Billing itself as “MTV meets QVC,” Honeyshed made its debut in a soft launch last week. The idea behind the site is…
Perhaps in response to critics calling Funny or Die a one-hit wonder, the comedy site has launched a new extreme sports site,…
Thanks to this week’s sponsors for keeping the hamsters fed and the wheels turning: CDW CoreCases Crucial Etymotic OWC PowerMax Qdea ResQ…
According to ThinkSecret, Leopard is still on track for its delayed release estimate of October. This gives Apple a matter of a…
I don’t see the details behind this, but InformationWeek tells us that AT&T is set to announce a boost in their 3G…
Earlier this month, Apple delivered on what fans had long been asking for – a widescreen iPod video with the touch screen…
Thanks to the hard-working folks at Engadget we have advance notice on two digital video products waiting in the wings from Apple…
A few days after everyone went into a tizzy over Facebook launching an iPhone-specific website, another social networking service, Multiply has come…
Back in April of this year BlackBerry spawner RIM announced they would be bringing a Virtual Blackberry environment to Windows Mobile devices. …
Last week I wrote about my failure to understand why everyone and their dog seems to be churning out FTP and Text…
If you like being so far out on the bleeding edge such that using a newly released beta isn’t high risk enough…
I just noticed Colin Walker’s mention of the Microsoft "Shift" research project. No, it has nothing to do with the HTC Shift…
Geek Sugar is kicking off a series on Geek bachelors with a little Q&A with me. Who’s next? Inquiring minds want to…
Though Adobe’s Flash player sits in nearly every browser and plays hundreds of millions of videos (and other things) per day, the…
Don’t you want to be prepared for the "Smartphone" category on Jeopardy? C’mon, Alex is just dying to ask questions like "This…
Alcatel and Lucent Technologies have finally decided to tie the knot and merge their two companies, in what amounts to be a…
I spent a good deal of time at the Microsoft booth at CES yesterday and grabbed some photos of some very interesting…
Rejoice people, for now you can get a one megabit down/256 kbps up service from MetroFi’s in 75% of Cupertino, California –…
Armaan Khan wants to see a mini Tablet similar to one I have begged for in the past but with a big…
E-Bay is jacking up its rates. I guess owning the entire market gives you that kind of monopolistic leverage. The price boost…
Call Center Magazine: Goldman Sachs’ October IT Spending Survey says that 29% of CIOs polled plan to install VoIP in the next…
W3 will be discussing wireless web standards in Barcelona tomorrow and day after. Tons of presentations. No surprise, Microsoft is not presenting…
Damon Darlin at his wicked best: Verizon and SBC are getting ready to compete against the cable companies. The Wall Street Journal…
Broadband Over Power Lines is the new big thing, but a Platt’s study shows that even consumers might not be interested unless…
Let me explain the totally and completely politically incorrect headline. Ofcom, the UK regulator says that UK has raced past Germany in…
Jonathan Greene is giving some serious word-up to EyeBeam’s Mac-Friendly Media Center. And just when were getting a wee-bit jealous about the…
SBC Communications, finally, is getting its FTTP groove on. The company has started to formalize and pick vendors for its mega-billion dollar…
After being comatose for nearly two months, VoIPDaily.com has been revived, thanks to some magical new cures and hard work. Actually the…
Cisco slowly and slowly is increasing its lead in the Enterprise Voice over IP (VoIP) market, with a 31.8 percent share of…