Ucilia Wang 07 09 09, 7:00 AM

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SolFocus Raises $30.6M More to Close C Round

SolFocus has raised an additional $30.6 million to bring the total amount for its C round to $77.6 million, the company said Thursday. The company said it had closed the first part of the funding in January this year.

The Mountain View, Calif., startup said it would use the money to transition from pilot to commercial production of its concentrating photovoltaic systems this year.

SolFocus has developed systems with curved glass reflectors and lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar cells for electricity generation. The triple-junction solar cells are expensive and make use of gallium-arsenide, germanium and other materials in the III-V semiconductor group.

Through the use of the concentrator, the semiconductors could generate twice the energy as the conventional crystalline silicon solar cells, the company said.

By using the concentrator, the system would only need a tiny sliver of the expensive solar cells. Critics, however, said the savings achieved by using smaller solar cells aren't as attractive now as they used to be, when silicon – the raw material for crystalline silicon solar cells – commanded high prices a few years ago. Silicon prices have fallen quickly over the past year.

SolFocus, founded in 2005, introduced its second system last November. The company engineers the optics and buys solar cells and some other components for assembling each system. The company's vice president of marketing, Nancy Hartsoch, said back then that the new system could concentrate the sun 500 times.

In Thursday's announcement, the company said its system now could focus sunlight 650 times.

The startup has a factory in Mesa, Ariz., for producing 30 megawatts of glass reflectors each year.

SolFocus has inked several agreements to supply the systems to project developers. In March, it announced a 10-megawatt deal with the Samaras Group in Greece. Another customer is EMPE Solar, which plans to build 10 megawatts of projects at different sites in southern Spain.

The company completed a 500-kilowatt project in Spain and a 7.2-kilowatt system for a radio station in San Francisco in 2008. It began generating revenue last year.

Apex Venture Partners led the C round. Return investors include New Enterprise Associates, NGEN and Yellowstone Ventures. New investors included Demeter Partners and Advanced Equities.