CPV, Pt. 5: More VC Funding in CPV

We’ve had a great response to the Concentrated Photovoltaics (CPV) series:

Part One: High-Concentration PV Systems
Part Two: Low-Concentration PV Systems
Part Three: III-V Semiconductors for CPV
Part Four: CPV Poetry Slam With Sunrgi

Here are some more items in the CPV vein: a few just announced funding rounds, a few CPV companies I somehow missed, and by popular demand, more CPV poetry from Sunrgi’s KRS Murthy.

Banyan Energy Offers Low-Concentration Module

Banyan Energy, based in Berkeley, Calif. is a startup developing a set of optics to concentrate sunlight within a PV module. The company’s optics platform can be used to achieve concentration levels ranging from 2x up to 500x, seeking to deliver high performance, reliability, and manufacturability. Banyan’s first product is a low-concentration module.

Whitfield Solar Harnesses Sun’s Energy

An astute reader brought U.K.-based CPV startup Whitfield Solar, to my attention.

Spun out of Reading University, Whitfield Solar’s product uses an array of Fresnel lenses to concentrate the sun’s energy. Whitfield claims its initial product competes with flat-plate photovoltaic panels with lower cost, lower weight, lower embodied energy and lower-tech manufacturing processes. Whitfield’s initial products are silicon-based.

Pyron Solar Gets Another $1 Million in Funding

We did a brief profile of Pyron Solar in Part One (High-Concentration PV Systems).

Pyron Solar builds a triple junction-based 2-axis HCPV system with arrays floating in water. It received $2 million in first round funding from New Energies Invest in 2007. Pyron just received another $1 million in a second closing of its Round A from NEI last week.

The funding will finance a pilot demonstration of Pyron’s technology with a Southern California utility, according to Doug Carriger, the company’s CEO.

Concentrator Optics, a CPV Lens Designer, Receives VC Funding

Concentrator Optics is another player in the CPV ecosystem who received funding last week. Belgium-based VC Capricorn Venture Partners provided the undisclosed amount of funding to the German-based Fresnel lens firm.

The market for solar Fresnel lenses is estimated to reach $280 million in 2011, according to the Capricorn press release.

Concentrator Optics designs and produces Fresnel lenses for the CPV market. The company’s lenses are non-imaging Fresnel lenses assembled in large area parquets. According to the company, these can’t be designed or produced by the traditional smaller-dimension makers of imaging optical elements.

We’ll Leave You With Some Poetry From CPV Firm Sunrgi’s Founder, KRS Murthy

WAKE UP CALL

Truth woke me up with an alarm
with a very loud scream,
big blow to my head
throwing cold water on the face
of my false dreams of the future.

Dream that levitated my life
Over the air lacking of oxygen
Suffocating my brain of any logic.

Can’t go back to sleep,
but not really awake