Abound Solar CEO Set to Retire

Abound Solar, a thin-film startup developing cadmium-telluride solar panels, only began commercial production a month ago, but the company's CEO Pascal Noronha now plans to retire. Or rather, he's "returning to retirement," the company said in a press release on Thursday.

Noronha plans to become the chairman of the company's board of directors by the end of this year. He'll remain as the chief executive until Abound finds his successor, the company said.

John Hill, who has been the chairman, will remain on the board.

The Fort Collins, Colo.-based company was founded by researchers from the State University of Colorado in January 2007, though Noronha began working with the founders to bring the lab-based technology to commercial production in late 2006.

It built a commercial factory in Longmont, Colo., that has an initial production capacity of 65 megawatts per year. The factory could accommodate equipment for 200 megawatts per year.

In an interview in April this year, Noronha claimed that the company would be able to produce solar panels at under $1 per watt, just as First Solar has achieved over four years. Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar is the world's largest solar thin-film maker, and it produces cadmium-telluride solar panels as well. He said Abound worked hard from the start to develop a manufacturing process that would churn out thin-films efficiently.

"It's a completely automated manufacturing process that from the time a piece of glass starts at the beginning of the line to the time that it exits as a finished product," Noronha said at the time. "The time it takes for that piece of glass to start to the time the piece of glass exits as a PV module is 120 minutes."