The cash consuming machine that is CIGS never fails to astound. Nanosolar, which makes copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar panels, confirmed with Dow Jones that it has raised $300 million in another round of financing. Sources have said for the past few weeks that Nanosolar was raising another round. Nanosolar already raised about $150 million, bringing their total now close to $450 million. The company, however, has garnered almost no revenues and only started shipping products, to a limited customer base, in December. But the company isn't the only one in this sort of situation. Solyndra, which we reported is trying to raise an additional $350 million, is burning through $15 million a month, say sources. Solyndra already raised $72 million last year and is not shipping product. The company, however, has signed sales contracts to ship over $1 billion in solar panels to two customers between now and 2012, assuming the company can get in mass production. (Nanosolar has estmiated its value at $2 billion while Solyndra has said it is worth $1 billion.) The burn rate for Solyndra is relatively high because it has over 400 employees and a 183,000 square foot facility, according to several sources. How big is that? If you converted that into nickels, $15 million weighs about 3.3 million pounds (about the same weigh as 39 extremely large big rigs.) That's 8,250 pounds of loose change per employee per month. In dollar bills, $15 million comes to 33,000 pounds, or 82.5 pounds for 400 employees. Assuming a 20 day work month, employees would have to put four pounds of paper money into a furnace each day to keep up at this rate. Like they say, working at start-ups is tough. The CIGS money, however, isn't free. Solyndra is trying to raise its $350 million through convertible securities. With these instruments, investors get shares in the company at a discount. The discount increases if the company misses certain deadlines. The company also pays six percent plus interest on the money. Nanosolar, say sources, is raising money in the same fashion, although we haven't confirmed that yet. Many VCs have said that there could be a collapse of some big solar companies next year. Solyndra never returns calls for comments but I will call them anyway. Maybe I can catch someone on the way back from the furnace.