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Solar Roundup: HelioVolt, Hoku, Petra, Amonix, ECD

Funding, forecasting, and fulminating

According to the Austin Business Journal, HelioVolt, a once well-funded and well-regarded CIGS PV aspirant, has delayed its job creation commitments by two years in an attempt to preserve some local funding and save face. HelioVolt altered an agreement with state officials 18 months after it received $1 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund calling for the creation of 158 jobs. Now, an amended agreement extends the target date for creating… Read More ›

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Thin-Film Solar Investment Dries Up

Thin film 2010 is thin film 2.0: go small or go home.

VC investment in solar power is still going strong, despite a dismal 2009 and an only slightly more heartening first quarter of 2010.

But the sub-sector of thin-film solar is a different story.  In 2007 and 2008, almost every energy and greentech investor invested in a thin-film firm.  In fact, they did so in a big way -- with $100 million plus funding rounds going to Nanosolar, HelioVolt, AVA Solar, MiaSole, Sulfurcell, SoloPower, etc.

Here's a… Read More ›

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Q&A With David Gelbaum of Quercus: He Likes Solar

No new investments for Quercus right now, says Gelbaum.

It's scale up time for the Quercus Trust.

The somewhat secretive venture firm is not currently placing new investments, said founder David Gelbaum in an exclusive and somewhat rare interview. Instead, the firm will concentrate on putting more money in the existing companies already in the portfolio to build them up.

Considering the scope of the trust, that's still a mammoth job. The firm has around 40 to 45 companies in the portfolio, he… Read More ›

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David Gelbaum Takes a Job—As CEO of Entech

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

David Gelbaum, the super-secretive investor behind the Quercus Trust, just took a day job.

He will serve as CEO of Entech Solar, one of the Trust's investments. He takes over for Frank Smith, who became Entech's CEO in March 2008.

The product of a merger between struggling solar installer WorldWater and Solar Technologies, Entech has devised a solar unit that contains silicon photovoltaic cells, which can convert sunlight into electricity, as… Read More ›

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Ausra Gets Bought By Areva

The three-way bidding war is over.

Areva, the swarming energy conglomerate, has won the bidding war and purchased Ausra, the solar thermal specialist.

Two other conglomerates had been bidding on the company, according to sources. One of them, however, was likely not Siemens. Siemens bought rival Solel for $418 million last year.

Like many Silicon Valley-funded startups, Ausra came up with a novel idea for harnessing clean power, but has lacked the money, engineering and contracts… Read More ›

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Greentech IPO Scorecard: Tesla, Solyndra, Codexis

For better or for worse, 2010 looks to be the year of the greentech IPO.

According to a study by Ernst & Young, 53 companies filed paperwork to hold initial public offerings in Q4 2009 -- the highest number of new registrants in a single quarter since 2007. That means that there are more deals in the IPO pipeline than there have been for more than two years.  

And a number of those IPOs happen to be high-profile offerings in the greentech sector.

For several years I've been predicting that 2010 would be the year of… Read More ›

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Can U.S. Know-How and Arab Oil Money Make the Middle East a Tech Hub?

Masdar City has a growing university, a good plan to tackle energy markets, and money. But will they come?

Abu Dhabi--For grad students, it's easily one of the best deals on the map.

The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST)-- the graduate school for alternative energy created by the emirate of Abu Dhabi with help from MIT -- pays all of its students' expenses. That includes tuition, housing, food, travel, fees for taking the GRE, and more. Students even get a monthly stipend to help take the "starving" out of the student.

MIST, which… Read More ›

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Bob Metcalfe of Polaris on Startup Sun Catalytix

The return of the hydrogen economy via low-cost electrolysis.

Renewable energy start-up Sun Catalytix' history, so far, is a good example of early-stage VCs doing their job and scientists doing theirs.

MIT Professor Daniel Nocera had a discovery that, according to VC investor Bob Metcalfe, "mimicked photosynthesis with inorganic chemistry."  Nocera's Lab at MIT studies the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. 

Polaris swept in before Nocera published his paper, got a license from… Read More ›

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The Prospects of Amorphous Silicon PV: Down, But Hardly Out

While amorphous silicon kept a low profile through 2009, competitors will ignore it in coming years at their own peril.

The year is 2007. Generous subsidy programs in Germany and Spain are driving demand for PV through the roof, and crystalline silicon module vendors are struggling to keep pace. Polysilicon is hard to find, and the little that is available is selling for well over $300/kg. Crystalline silicon modules, at $4 per watt, aren't cheap. Of the three available thin-film options, CdTe and CIGS require significant investment in R&D, are tricky to… Read More ›

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Geoengineering: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Needed: life-supporting planets to participate in an exciting study.

Studying geoengineering is emerging as one of the most important tasks facing humanity. Climate scientists are taking the necessary first steps: defining the problem and deciding on how to conduct the research.

A pair of articles in today’s issue of Science — a Policy Forum item and a Perspectives item — contribute to these efforts by raising questions about research into solar radiation management. The policy item addresses the political issues… Read More ›

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Classifying the Top Utility-Scale PV Developers in the United States

The twelve project developers with the largest pipelines all share one thing in common: access to a large balance sheet

Assessing the size of the utility-scale PV pipeline in the U.S. is a highly subjective process. If you were to aggregate every project announcement, you'd find well over 10 GW of projects in various stages of development throughout the country. The BLM recently agreed to fast-track its review of 14 solar projects that alone add up to 6.5 GW, and prospective project developers are trawling much of the Western United States signing land leases for… Read More ›

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Greentech Panel with VCs, IBs and the Law

A quick look at the state of the greentech industry

I moderated a Greentech Panel in Santa Clara, CA on Friday the 29th that was hosted and organized by the FountainBlue organization. 

We were taking a quick look at the state of the greentech industry.

The panelists:

• Dan Adler, President, California Clean Energy Fund 
• Matt Maloney, Head of Relationship Management, Silicon Valley Bank  
• Tim Woodward, Managing Director, Nth Power 
• Laurie Yoler, Managing Director, GrowthPoint Technology Partners … Read More ›

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Obama’s $28.4 Billion Budget for the DOE

For nuclear, and to some degree, researchers, 2010 looks to be a very good year. On the other hand, oil is poised to take a hit.

The 2011 budget request is here. In short, there are big cuts in tax credits for oil and gas, a massive increase in funding for nuclear, and $625 million for R&D into clean technology areas like solar, wind, and advanced energy production. Paying for these increases through cap and trade is not part of the plan at the moment.

Here are the highlights, straight from the DOE:

• Eliminating more than $2.7 billion in tax subsidies for oil, coal… Read More ›

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Solyndra: 1.9 MW Project Installed, But Story Remains Fraught With Uncertainty

Peeling back the layers of the Solyndra story reveals a number of serious challenges that the company will face on the path towards sustained success.

As announced last Wednesday, Umwelt-Sonne-Energie GmbH (USE), a German integrator, completed the installation of a 1.9 MW system in Belgium that features Solyndra’s cylindrical CIGS panels. The project consisted of ten rooftop sites owned by a large international food retailer whose identity, curiously, was not revealed.

So what does this announcement mean? No doubt it is a sizable step forward in Solyndra’s quest for market validation, which at… Read More ›

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Josh Becker: A Potential Greentech Voice in Gov’t

It means putting his VC career on hold, but could also mean improved energy policy in CA.

Josh Becker is a greentech venture capital investor at New Cycle Capital and he's running for the California state Assembly on a very greentech platform.  If he wins, he's going to have to take a substantial pay cut.

He's running against two other Democrats and no Republicans in the liberal 21st Assembly District, which includes the cities of Palo Alto, Redwood City, Los Altos Hills, Woodside, Menlo Park, Portola Valley, and Stanford… Read More ›

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PV Modules Built with Spire - Born in the USA

Spire has been in the solar business since Day One.

Roger Little has been, in his words, "in the photovoltaics business since Day One."

He is the CEO of Spire Solar, "probably the oldest company in the PV business" with "40 years" experience of building and supplying turn-key manufacturing equipment for c-Si solar panels.   He spoke about his long-held and long-term vision for U.S. solar in a recent Greentech Media webinar.

Mr. Little has a big idea -- distributed solar module assembly. He sees… Read More ›

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CPV Update: NREL, Solar Junction, GreenVolts, etc.

Developments in the zero billion-dollar concentrating photovoltaic market

NREL's Sarah Kurtz has updated her Concentrating Photovoltaics report. The pdf is downloadable here. 

Sarah is always the optimist about CPV.  According to the report:

The high-concentration PV industry has made great strides in the last year, including:

• Demonstration of full-scale products with high efficiency: 29% for small module and 25% AC for a full-scale system.
• Multiple companies have set up manufacturing, taking the big step from… Read More ›

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Early Bird Registration Now Open for the Solar Summit

Save $200 on registration until Feb. 1, 2010.

Greentech Media is pleased to announce that early bird registration is now open for our 2010 Solar Summit, taking place in Phoenix, AZ on March 30-31, 2010.

With the underpinning of GTM Research’s in-depth knowledge of the solar market, an impressive speaker line-up and a beautiful southwestern setting, this event will be the premier conference for deal-making and gaining access to new business opportunities in the U.S. and beyond.

Visit the  Read More ›

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Ted Turner Gets Back Into Solar

He got $34 million last time.

Flamboyant billionaire Ted Turner has joined forces with Southern Company, an Atlanta-based utility with 42 gigawatts of capacity, to seek out alternative energy projects.

The two will initially focus on large-scale solar projects in the southwest, currently one of the hotbeds of solar development in the country. Both California and Arizona have created lucrative incentives to build solar farms.Interestingly, Southern serves customers in… Read More ›