Venture Capital Lights Up Solar in Q3

We reported earlier this week on the resurgence of venture capital investment in greentech. We broke it out sector-by-sector in this post. The graph above breaks it down year-by-year and looks at the recovery quarter by quarter

The chart below is another example of some of the work done in the Greentech Innovations Report – where we carefully track every VC deal in greentech as well as report on a different renewable energy topic every issue.

Investors channeled $575 million into 29 solar VC deals in the third quarter.  The investments spanned the solar sector and ranged from the fanciful (solar in space from SolarEn) to the sublime.  Notable in this data is the number of small investments - early stage VC investing is not dead.  Also notable are the 11 European and Asian investments, a larger than typical proportion.  European VC is alive and well.  The largest deal, Solyndra's $198 million, was a requisite piece of funding for Solyndra in order to garner their $535 million federal loan guarantee. 

Does the VC model still work in big solar? Can massively-funded VC startups like Nanosolar ($500M in VC) and Solyndra ($800M+ in VC) provide a reasonable multiple for their investors?  Or are the less capital intensive solar plays like SunRun or Enphase more suitable to the VC investor?  The next few quarters should give us some answers.

VC in Greentech Back With a Vengeance

They're back.

After a weak first quarter that had everyone grinding their teeth and a modestly improved second quarter, venture capital investment in green technologies roared back with $1.9 billion invested in 112 deals in the third quarter of 2009. That's up from $836 million in 59 deals in the first quarter of 2009 and $1.2 billion in 85 deals in the solid second quarter.

Solar power was once again the leading investment segment at more than $575 million in 29 deals followed closely by biofuels, biomass, and gasification deals at $512 million in 17 deals. As forecast by GTM Research – investment in Smart Grid, Energy Storage and Automotive is gaining momentum.

Q3 VC Investment in Greentech

Driven by the optimism of a recovering economy, plentiful government funding for renewable energy and a recent successful Greentech IPO in battery maker A123 – venture firms have returned to investing in all stages across all greentech sectors. 


Notable and sizeable deals included:

• Solyndra’s $198 million VC investment from Argonaut Private Equity, et al. for its Fremont, Calif.-based thin-film solar firm
• Synthetic Genomic’s $300 million multi-year commitment from Exxon for the development of algae-based biofuels
• eMeter’s $32 million investment from Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital for smart grid management software
• Tesla Motor’s $82.5 million round from Fjord Capital and Daimler Motors for Tesla’s groundbreaking electric vehicle
• Serious Materials’ $60 million round from Mesirow Capital et al. for green building materials

Some of the most active VC investors in greentech this quarter included NEA, CMEA, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital.  


In addition to the sheer magnitude of investment (this quarter’s $1.9 billion is close to reaching the investment levels of pre-recession 2008) there is a marked trend of a return to early stage deals with more than 35 Series A and seed rounds this quarter.


 Also remarkable was the increasingly global nature of greentech investment this quarter. More than 35 deals came from outside the United States with plentiful deals from the U.K. and France.

Steve Vassallo, Venture Partner at Foundation Capital, sums it up: "It's nice to see that we've hit an inflection point across all segments of cleantech.  With the economic recovery well on its way, combined with imminent carbon legislation and the acceleration of energy efficiency and renewable portfolio standards, I expect we're going to see a surge of cleantech IPOs.  Several of our cleantech portfolio companies – from SunRun to SilverSpring – are about to close their biggest quarters on record.  No doubt, there's good reason to be optimistic."

Details on every deal in the third quarter can be found in the Greentech Innovations Report.

Solar for Elephants, Cheetahs and Lions

African elephants, Ethiopian wolves, Andean cats and cheetahs are on the run. Habitat loss, encroaching human populations, disease and pollution are threatening their existence.  Do you want your or your children's generation to be the last to know these creatures in the wild? To let them go the way of the thylacine?

If you're reading this website you are likely passionate about green technology. The markets are enormous and growing and there is the potential to make lots of money. Investors like Ira Ehrenpreis of Technology Partners have tried for years to decouple greentech from its hippie, save-the-world roots. Ira has long insisted that the green in greentech is about greenbacks, not about vegan, yoga-practicing, tree-sitting, save the whales, kill the seals, recycling, granola-crunching wiccans.

Sorry Ira. Time to help save the world. At least in today's blog. We'll return to making money tomorrow.

The Wildlife Conservation Network works to protect endangered species and preserve their natural habitats. The organization supports innovative strategies for people and wildlife to co-exist and thrive. The WCN has a solar project, and it needs donations of solar equipment.

Dedicated conservationists all over the globe are studying species in decline and trying to learn enough to save them. They live and work in extreme environments and they need electricity to run their camps, power their communications and just keep their modest facilities in repair.

The WCN Solar Project designs, assembles and ships solar electric systems to conservation projects in the field. By providing a reliable source of energy for everything from lights and laptop computers to GPS systems, the Solar Project is making a real impact on critical efforts to protect endangered species. They are using this electricity to conduct cutting edge research like tracking elephants in real-time via GPS, powering VSAT computer links at 15,000 feet in Ethiopia, and many other state-of-the-art programs.

Many conservationist camps get power from diesel generators or in some cases off of their jeep battery. Try getting barrels of diesel fuel to 14,300 feet elevation in Ethiopia on a predictable schedule. How are you going to refill your lead acid batteries with distilled water in the bush in Botswana?

Solar power is an obvious solution to these problems. Solar provides electrical power but these conservationist camps are also beginning to work with solar cookers, solar water pumps, and solar water purification.  Less obvious is how a shoestring outfit like the WCN is going to afford them (even with a plunging PV cell ASP).

The Wildlife Conservation Network's solar project is also on the cutting edge of efficient green lighting – illuminating their camps with solid state lighting donated by startup Lumiette, a flat-panel florescent lighting company we covered here. That's right – donated lighting and donated solar. BP Solar has already donated 300 solar panels, the appropriately named Outback Power has donated off-grid inverters, Lumiette has provided lighting, MK Batteries has provided L16 deep-cycle batteries and Beronio Lumber has donated plywood for shipping the equipment.

In the words of solar power recipient Dr. Laurence Frank of Living with Lions in Kenya: “It works – the project is lit up, the satellite-internet system is working, and I don’t hear a generator!”

For Rebecca Klein of Cheetah Conservation Botswana: “It was very exciting to turn on the light switch for the first time and know that the energy making it all possible is completely sustainably produced.” 

Founder of the WCN Solar Project, Stephen Gold commented: "You need to think about everything that could possibly go wrong – it's kind of like going to the moon. You have to bring along everything – nuts, bolts, wiring, plugs, spares, instruction manuals."

If you're interested in further details you can visit these sites. One-hundred percent of any donation can be designated to the conservation of a specific species.

• Elephants               

• Lions                      

• Ethiopian Wolves  (only a few hundred remain)

• Cheetahs                

• Snow Leopards            

• Small Cats              

• Painted Dogs  (only 3,000 remain)

• Predator conservation  

WCN is having a Wildlife Conservation Expo and Garden Party on October 3 to 4 in San Francisco where you can hear conservation heroes from across the globe, including Dr. Jane Goodall, share inspiring stories about the endangered animals they work to protect and how you can get involved.

So – come on, Suntech (Andrew, cowboy up, it's not like we need custom sizes), SunPower (Julie – who is the contact at SunPower for a community project like this?), Sanyo, SMA, Q-Cells, Enphase et al. The organization also accepts cash donations. If you'd like to donate – contact the organization or contact me and I will get you to the right people. (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

KP-Funded Solar Startup Solasta Seeking Next Round

"Separating the path of the photons from the path of the generated charge carriers."

"Decoupling the optical and electronic pathways."

That's what Solasta is trying to do.

The Newton, Mass.-based solar firm was founded in 2006 with A round funding from Kleiner Perkins. KP has a few of those stealth solar firms including Alta Devices and Solexel, none of whom appear on the portfolio portion of its website. In addition to VC funding from KP, Solasta has received more than $3 million in two DOE grants. 

With technology and founding personnel in the form of three physics professors from Boston College (Michael J. Naughton, CTO,  Zhifeng Ren and Krzysztof Kempa), Solasta is using amorphous silicon and carbon nanotubes on a glass substrate in an attempt to create more efficient solar cells that are simple and inexpensive to manufacture.  Solasta is joined by at least 35 other VC-funded next-gen solar firms with similar goals. Most of whom will meet with limited commercial success.

Solasta is currently helmed by former KPCB Executive-in-Residence Mike Clary who has led other advanced technology companies such as GMZ Energy and Nanostar.

According to the executive summary in a February 2009 DOE report, Solasta:

"Provides a photovoltaic medium with independent optical and electronic pathways, separating the photo from the voltaic with respect to required thickness of
photovoltaic absorber material. It does so with innovations in both light and charge collection."

The amorphous-silicon "nanocoax" structure increases current and potentilally lowers materials cost. The company (which is hiring engineers) claims the process could increase the efficiency of conventional amorphous silicon PV by up to 150 percent.

CTO Naughton further explained Solasta's process in an email:

"In contrast to the numerous nanowire solar cell approaches under development, Solasta's Nanocoax, which is literally a nanoscale coaxial cable (think cable TV), requires photogenerated electrons and holes to travel only nanoscopic distances before reaching metallic electrodes. This significantly lowers carrier recombination, allowing more current to get out, and thus higher efficiency, even for noncrystalline materials like (but not restricted to) a-Si. Light collection is controlled by the Nanocoax vertical height, while the charge travels short distances horizontally (radially). This separation of the 'photo-' from the '-voltaic' solves the thick-vs-thin conundrum of solar power, and allows Solasta to use films even thinner than 'thin film,' further lowering cost and weight."

A startup with a new technology in solar can try to become a PV panel supplier like Solyndra or Nanosolar – but that takes hundreds of millions of dollars, could take a decades and cost thousands of innocent lives. The company could try to go the route that 1366 Technologies is trying – selling add-on processes that fits into existing manufacturing schemes.  Or a startup can license its technology and that is currently Solasta's vision.

I spoke with the CEO and CTO this morning. "We look to license the technology to enable a step up in efficiency and to allow companies to differentiate," Clary said. Clary also envisioned a "software model" for the license, where successive generations of the Solasta technology would continue to flow through through their liscensees.

Naughton added that this was "an architecture, not a materials process," and that the firm was "not at all restricted to a-Si."

The startup is currently seeking more funding and my sources tell me that VantagePoint Venture Partners is taking a closer look.

The U.S. has a CTO and He Knows About the Smart Grid

Aneesh Chopra is the Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for Technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology. He was sworn in on May 22, 2009 and is the nation's first CTO. He spoke to several hundred Silicon Valley folks at a TiE event early last Saturday morning. I repeat, early Saturday morning.

Mr. Chopra listed the technology areas that he and the Obama administration want to address:

Health IT: One of Chopra's "passions." He wants to "catalyze product innovation through open data standards, deliver administrative simplification, and align research and health IT."

Education Technology: He wants to ensure "continuity of learning." What happens if schools close due to, say, a flu? How do we enable nimble, easy to roll out, continuity of learning mechanisms?

And lastly and most germane to Greentech Media readers, he wants to accelerate the smart grid and energy efficiency through product innovation enabled by open standards. His office is "extraordinarily concerned about cybersecurity in the grid." and is championing open standards.  According to Chopra, "FERC claims we can lower energy consumption with demand reponse by 20 percent."
 
After his keynote, Chopra sat on a panel along with Scott Lang, the CEO of Smart Grid poster child, Silver Springs Networks. Silver Spring has raised about $175 million in Venture Capital from investors such as Foundation Capital and KP. KP's special partner, Al Gore, is chairman of SSN's advisory board. Lang commented on how his customers, the utilities, are some of the most risk-adverse entities on the planet yet they are now working with SSN and networking about 10,000 homes a day with smart meters.  Lang claimed that energy efficiency and demand response can lower our need for new generation by 50 percent.

Silver Springs recently purchased Greenbox for a rumored $20 million in an all stock deal. Greenbox had recently been looking for funding. And while we're promulgating rumors, SSN is talking about a company valuation of, sit down, $1.5 billion.

Finishing off this event was Silicon Valley icon, Steve Wozniak, looking relatively trim and upbeat despite being replaced by "The Hammer" on Dancing with the Stars. The Woz meandered enthusiastically about education and his recent stint as a teacher. He received about as much applause as the CTO of the U.S.

SunPower: How Important Is High Efficiency in PV? (Updated)

SunPower's Doug Rose, the senior director of technology strategy, presented at the Silicon Valley PV Society in a talk titled, "Technology and Economics of High Efficiency c-Si PV." Of course, the thrust of the talk was the strength of SunPower's high-efficiency solar cells and panels, and the impact of efficiency on the cost and payback of a solar system.

The high efficiency of SunPower's solar cell stems in most part from its back-contact technology – a technology pioneered by founder Dick Swanson in the early 1980s at Stanford with low-cost manufacturing breakthroughs in 2001. The back contact design avoids gridlines on the front of the cell so there's no metal obscuring the cell and therefore more light gets converted to power. According to Rose, other design advantages are gained from the back-contact architecture – it allows better optimization of the front surface through texturing, an optimized backside mirror, localized contacts, and obviously backside gridlines.

The all back-contact cells allow SunPower to get to median production efficiency of 22 percent at the cell level. And while they're at it – cell thicknesses in the 150 micron range at about 6 grams of silicon per watt.

Rose raised the question: "How can high efficiency cells be cost effective? You're not using the same platform as everyone else." The response was: "Sunpower spends a little more in cell processing to deliver savings across the value chain."

That's the value proposition of high efficiency cells. The cells are more expensive but cost savings are realized all down the line. 

So how much exactly is this "efficiency bonus?"

According to research performed by crack Greentech Research analyst Shyam Mehta – gains in efficiency drive cost reductions at all steps of manufacturing on a $/W basis, from feedstock cost to module conversion – a 1 percent improvement in efficiency leads to a 5 percent to 7 percent decrease in fully loaded module cost. (Shyam's most recent report is on PV Manufacturing in the US and can be found here). His efficiency thesis is charted below:

In a solar market where prices are plunging, margins are crumbling and market consolidation is on the horizon – how much of a premium can SunPower command for its high-end product? A banker friend believes the dollar per watt premium is only 10 percent to 20 percent over conventional silicon or thin film PV.  With SunPower at a less than $2 per Watt module price in the fourth quarter of 2009 and some c-Si vendors below $1.50 per Watt – can SunPower command a 35 percent premium?

SunPower believes it can. My banker friend says no.

Here are some of the benefits of higher efficiency and the SunPower cell structure:

• Lower area-related costs
• Reduced installation costs
• Reduced shipping costs
• Reduced Balance of Plant (BOP) costs
• Allows more Watts in area-constrained sites, which reduces the $/W cost of project costs such as sales, permitting, design, etc.
• Delivers more energy per rated watt because of a better temperature coefficient, low light performance, broad spectral response, no LID

All factors resulting in a lower LCOE.

A Very Few Words on LCOE

A simplified formula for Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is:

LCOE = Panel cost + BoP cost + O&M costs / Sunlight collection * Conversion efficiency

But, unfortunately it's not really that simple.  SunPower has detailed calculations and displayed the many factors influencing LCOE in its presentation. NREL has its own byzantine formula for LCOE.

An accurate measure of LCOE will have to include:

• Initial investment
• Depreciation tax
• Annual costs
• System residual value
• System energy production

And LCOE calculations have a very high sensitivity to certain input variables such as:

• Annual panel degradation
• Differences in annual discount rate / cost of capital
• System life (inverter replacement, etc.)
• Annual O&M

The major contributors to LCOE are:

• Capital costs
• Modiule $/W
• Area related BoS
• Electrical BoS
• Project related costs

"If someone says the LCOE of my technology is x cents per kilowatt-hour, it still doesn't tell you a lot," said Rose.

Differentiation and Branding in a Commodifying Market

A healthy cost structure, a good balance sheet, and the right level of vertical integration are what will distinguish winners from losers in the coming solar shakeout. Differentiation is going to help as well. And SunPower has that technical differentiation by virtue of the highest efficiency commercial solar product – a 22 percent median efficiency in 2006 looking for over 23 percent in its Gen3 cells. Combined with itss one-axis trackers which increase capacity factor by about 30 percent to match energy production with summer load, an important point for utilities – SunPower has some of the crucial ingredients for survival in the demand-constrained solar landscape.

Single axis tracking is a tremendous lever to reduce the LCOE of power plant, and to deliver significantly more power when the utility companies most want it (late afternoon in summer).

Of further interest in the differentiation department is SunPower's recent plunge into consumer branding of its panels. Ride a bus in San Francsisco and you'll see a SunPower-branding consumer ad campaign. 

Three questions for our readers:

• Do consumers care which brand of solar panel they're buying?
• What is the real value, the real premium for high efficiency?
• And contrarily – what is the penalty for low efficiency?  Where does 6 percent to 8 percent efficient a-Si or OSC fit into the solar landscape?  Or does it?

We welcome your thoughts.