Prism Solar Technologies, which uses holographic films to convert sunlight into electricity, plans to start assembling the films into panels for market launch later this year.

The Lake Katrine, N.Y.-based startup, founded in 2005, is negotiating for a factory space near its headquarters to accommodate equipment that can produce 60 megawatts of panels per year, said Stephen Filler, director of business development at Prism Solar, Wednesday at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco. The holographic films will be made at its technology development center in Tucson, Ariz. The company also plans to build a 1-gigawatt factory in New York state to build the films.

The company recently won a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for starting its panel manufacturing operation. Prism Solar also plans to announce a new round of funding soon, Filler said. The company raised $8.5 million in 2007.

The selling point of the startup’s technology is that it uses holographic films to reduce the need for expensive silicon (see company diagrams). The holographic film, sandwiched between glass, can capture the desired portions of the light spectrum to boost energy production. The film then reflects the light in various directions, so the light can hit the front and back of the silicon-based solar cells to improve energy output as well, the company said.

Filler said Prism Solar’s technology could reduce the use of silicon by up to 70 percent. He declined to provide the initial pricing for a Prism Solar’s panel, but said the company expects the price to reach $1.04 per watt by 2012 and $0.75 per watt by 2015.

Fool’s gold is an apt symbol for the future of sustainable energy, though not (we hope) in the obvious sense. It’s a case of less being more. There’s a growing recognition that many sustainable energy technologies are not always produced sustainably, particularly when it comes to key materials like platinum, lithium, indium and high-grade crystalline silicon. It comes down to scarcity, toxicity, costly processing or a combination. Researchers are beginning to look for less toxic, earth-abundant materials to generate and store energy. MIT’s Tonio Buonassisi is leading an effort to systematically search for safe, abundant semiconductor compounds for photovoltaics. Efforts like this aim to produce energy systems that have long-lasting supplies of raw materials, have minimal negative impacts on the environment, and lower the cost of producing clean energy. Researchers from UC Berkeley have taken the concept a step further. They’ve produced a study that shows that if our goal is to use photovoltaics to meet a large portion of our electricity needs, some of these abundant compounds are the best way to go based simply on the economics. Here’s where fool’s gold, which has fooled gold hunters for ages with its similar color and sheen, comes in. The Berkeley study looked at 23 compounds for the total potential electricity that can be generated from systems made with the known reserves and cost per watt. They combined the results to identify materials with the greatest long-term potential for generating electricity. The clear winner was pyrite, or fool’s gold. The runner-up was amorphous silicon, already widely used in the photovoltaics industry. The study counters the prevailing assumption that the best way to push photovoltaics into the mainstream is to improve device efficiency without increasing costs. We also need to look at lowering costs without sacrificing too much efficiency. It turns out that less efficient but markedly cheaper materials can be a better route to making solar a dominant source of energy. The study should bring encouragement to the many researchers working to make dye-sensitized, organic and nanostructured solar cells commercially viable. Maybe it’ll also spur a renewed interest in making solar cells from fool’s gold. Eric Smalley is editor of Energy Research News. He has written about technology since 1987 and has freelanced for many publications including Discover, Scientific American, Wired News and The Boston Globe on topics ranging from quantum cryptography to global warming.

It looks like eSolar is moving toward the equipment business too.

Power provider NRG Energy signed a deal with eSolar under which NRG has acquired the rights to build solar thermal power plants on three areas earlier secured by eSolar for $10 million. In turn, eSolar will provide the equipment for the project. The first solar plants from this deal should be operational by 2011. NRG will subsequently sell the power to utilities.

Under the deal, eSolar will become the equipment manufacturer and consultant, not the power provider.

If the contours of the deal sound familiar, that’s because they are. Earlier this year, solar thermal startup Ausra changed its business plans. The company had earlier planned to build solar thermal power plants with its own equipment. Revenue for Ausra would come from selling power. In January, however, Ausra said it would start to concentrate on selling solar thermal equipments and building out solar thermal plants.

The reason for the switch? Capital and time, said Ausra’s CEO Robert Fishman in an interview. Building and owning power plants takes several years and hundreds of millions in capital. Utilities and power providers have access to the kind of manpower and money needed to do that. Startups don’t.

Power plants "are way beyond" the capabilities of a startup, Fishman said. Besides, by shifting to power plants, Ausra could begin to garner revenue now, versus several years in the future when power begins to come online.

Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar has already raised $130 million. Still, it has been looking for additional funds. New CEO (and early investor) Bill Gross said in January that the company was looking to sell up to 10 percent of the company.

More will be released in a press conference later today.

The power versus equipment debate will likely be a big one this year. BrightSource Energy, another solar thermal company, says it will forge ahead with its plans to become a power provider. It recently signed a deal to build 1.3 gigawatts worth of solar thermal capacity. Southern California Edison will buy the power from BrightSource. BrightSource and Stirling Energy Systems also have other large solar thermal contracts.

Wind companies in Europe are also debating their options on this issue.

Companies will largely determine which way to go on this issue depending on the circumstances, said Travis Bradford, who heads up the Prometheus Group, in an interview last week. If they need money now, they sell equipment, which can be lucrative as well as cutthroat. If they have enough, they tend to look at the idea of being a power provider more closely.

“People fit their business model to whatever restraints they find themselves under,� Bradford said.

Solar energy system owners and installers know that shading -- shadows caused by chimneys, tree branches or dust -- is a problem. How bad is the problem? National Semiconductor paid for a survey to quantify the issue, right before it’s due to start selling chips that it claims can recover some of the energy lost from shading. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said the survey showed that 41 percent of solar installers have to deal with shading when they sell or install a system. Only a little over half of the surveyed, or 54 percent, said shading is not acceptable, suggesting that the issue might not be as dire as it seems. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research did the phone survey in January and spoke with 150 installers in the United States. The amount of energy lost from shade can be significant, National Semi said. A panel can produce more than 50 percent less power if just 10 percent of it is in the shadow or covered in debris, the chip company said. National Semi is proposing to fix this output problem with its SolarMargic branded power management chips. The chips would be attached to each panel to track the energy output and ensure that whatever a shaded panel can produce is harvested by the central inverter. In some current energy system designs, those shaded panels are bypassed, National Semi said. The company delayed its launch to later this spring. Last year, the company said it would start selling the chips at the end of 2008.

Borrego Solar Systems has agreed to sell its residential installation business to groSolar for an undisclosed sum.

The El Cajon, Calif.-based Borrego said Thursday it will focus on designing and building solar energy systems for businesses and government agencies because that’s where the big money can be made. The company, which recently raised $14 million, is expanding into the mid-Atlantic region, beginning with New York and New Jersey. Borrego has been doing business in California and Massachusetts.

Borrego, founded in 1980, has reasoned that demand in the commercial and government markets will grow faster than the residential one. Sales from these two segments accounted for more 75 percent of the company’s revenue in 2008, it said. Borrego said it generated $60 million in revenue in 2008, and ended the year with more than $90 million in contracts.

Commercial and government projects tend to be larger and, until recently, more incentives were available for commercial installations, according to a study released today by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

A change in the federal investment tax credit this year will sweeten the deal for homeowners who want solar. On the other hand, the $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama this week contained a $5.5 billion provision for making federal buildings more energy efficient, and that could include adding solar energy systems.

Obviously, groSolar, founded in 1998, thinks it’s getting a pretty good deal with the acquisition. The company, based in White River Junction, Vt., serves 12 states and Canada. It does both residential and commercial projects.

There’s an apocryphal story about the origin of the dimensions of the standard-sized photovoltaic solar panel.  The tale goes that the maximum size of a UPS delivery truck’s shelf dictated the dimensions of the original PV panel’s form factor. (If any of our readers can confirm or refute that -- leave a comment below.) Anyway, the industry standard size is about 62 inches by 32 inches by 2 inches, give or take, for a panel that puts out between 150 and 200 watts. And that’s been the only game in town. Until now. Applied Materials large-format panel -- the 5.7m2 Gen 8.5 panel -- is fabricated by amorphous silicon suppliers like Signet and Moser Baer. These panels are relatively low efficiency (6 percent to 8 percent) and intended mostly for free-standing large-scale solar farms. (The glass size for these panels is inherited from the glass dimensions used in LCD PVD processing.) So we have PV panels with sizes dictated by truck shelves and flat screen displays. How about PV panels with shapes and sizes designed for actual rooftops? Which brings on Armageddon... Energy. A memorable if macabre name for a newly formed solar firm. Armageddon Energy is amongst the more than 200 solar startups created in the last few years that Greentech Media has listed and categorized. Armageddon's CEO Mark Goldman explained that there are 100 million homes in the U.S. but only about 60,000 have solar installed.  Why such a small percentage? There are a number of reasons -- cost of course, but also difficulty of installation and the intricacies of the permitting process. Goldman believes that someone will figure out how to deploy residential solar cheaply and attractively enough -- and with materials better suited for the application, to make it massively successful at displacing new power plants, and he sees Armageddon as that someone. "We take a ton of cost out of the installation by removing a lot of the overhead and labor," said Goldman about Armageddon's consumer-tailored solar panel.  The firm's modular and standard product streamlines the permitting process and the reasonably powered and reasonably priced 1-kilowatt system turns installing residential rooftop solar into a process like buying a home appliance instead of "a high-involvement sale." Goldman claims that Armageddon's uniquely shaped hexagonal module is easier to handle and better accommodates the contours and features of a rooftop. Three of the hexagonals are racked on a triangular support to form a "clover" and three of those clovers provide about a kilowatt of power. Armageddon claims:

• That its affordable systems enables mainstream consumers to buy into solar
• That plug-and-play modules allow installers to scale up rapidly
• That its standardized smaller, lighter system streamlines the sales process
• Its system makes it profitable for installers to do small systems

Armageddon isn't divulging all the details on its system, but it has a unique electrical set-up that dispenses with terror-inducing DC electronics and a housing that eliminates the heavy float glass and metal frame used in most solar panels. The firm has patents filed and is moving forward with engineering and development. Armageddon is in the midst of raising seed funding for the company (which must be a humbling experience -- lots of competitors and a flinchy investor climate). A name change might be in order, though.

Oncor is providing rebates to its Texas customers for installing solar energy systems.

The utility launched the $16 million, four-year program Monday. That should be enough money for 1,400 systems of various sizes, the utility said. Oncor will pay $2.46 per DC watt and up to $24,600 for each residential energy system. Its business and government customers are eligible to get incentives worth as much as $246,000 per system.

The move follows many other utilities in the country that offer various types of incentives to promote solar energy use, which of course gives solar energy equipment and service companies a boost in business.

Xcel Energy, the largest utility in Colorado, has offered rebates for some years, though it recently reduced the rebates in light of the availability of a federal tax credit (see Xcel Cuts Solar Credits by 40%). Now, under the stimulus package just passed by Congress, the tax credit, which would offset the costs of installing a solar energy system by 30 percent, will be converted to cash payments.

Meanwhile, customers of the Gainesville Regional Utilities in Florida could become the first bunch in the country to profit by selling solar power from their systems at home or businesses. The program, which is awaiting the state’s approval, would pay more for solar energy than for power from conventional sources. For the first two years of the program, the utilities would guarantee $0.32 per kilowatt-hour under a 20-year contract.