Intersolar Hallway Conversations and Rumors, Pt. 2

Continuing where we left off yesterday, here’s more of the chatter coming out of this year’s Intersolar conference in San Francisco:

• From the really big valuation department…Optisolar allegedly received a $132 million funding round last quarter at an $850 million pre-money valuation according to several anonymous VCs. Optisolar manufactures PV modules and builds large-scale solar farms and joins VC-funded solar firms like Nanosolar, Miasole and Solyndra in the very low-revenue, very high-valuation club. I contacted the communications director at Optisolar but they were less than communicative regarding their funding.

• Ausra, the startup solar thermal firm funded by Khosla Ventures and KPCB, announced that it was looking to close a $50M Round C. The company also mentioned that it is developing a proprietary thermal energy storage system that is not molten salt. That leaves water? Rocks?

• Solaicx, is scaling up a big factory to build low-cost solar ingots and wafers optimized for PV. The company’s CEO, Bob Ford, told me that they’re, “Reducing the cost of the wafer 75 percent,â€? and “launching in a major way with 300MW of capacity by the end of next year.â€?

• Suvi Sharma, Solaria’s CEO, builds a low-concentration PV system in the standard PV panel footprint by sectioning silicon wafers into strips and adding lensing. The thesis is not only to economize on silicon but as Mr. Sharma states,â€?The next great area of innovation in solar is in assembly.â€? The company started shipping its product last quarter from its 25MW production line.

• Nanosolar’s Managing Director, Erik Oldekop, had nothing interesting or new to say because, “You’re a journalist [sic] and not a customer.â€? I subsequently invited him to speak on one of our upcoming panels to provide more obfuscation and sidestepping.