Solyndra, the California maker of thin-film photovoltaic cells, has filed for an Initial Public Offering of its shares that could be worth up to $300 million. Solyndra announced its planned IPO on Friday evening, when the media cycle was largely focused on the climate change agreement brokered in Copenhagen.
Read More »
China Solar Power (CSP), a Hong Kong-based maker of solar PV panels, founded by Charles Johnson, the former CEO of asset management company Templeton Worldwide, has acquired ThinSilicon, a maker of thin-film solar panels.
Mountain View, Calif.-based ThinSilicon, launched in 2007 by three Stanford University PhD candidates studying material sciences, has developed a process that boosts the efficiency of thin-film PV modules. Investors in ThinSilicon include FireLake Capital Management and Spring Ventures. CSP is owned by Hong Kong-based asset management firm Tano Capital.
The companies did not disclose financial terms. Read More »
During the conference call announcing its third quarter results, First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) Chairman Mike Ahearn addressed an ongoing concern for cleantech companies – and companies across all industries – investing in China: the IP risk. Or, specific to First Solar, that the proprietary intelligence behind the development of its thin-film PVs gets in the hands of a local competitor.
First Solar is entering the Chinese market in a big way, having recently announced the signing of an MOU with the Chinese government to develop the 20-gigawatt Ordos power project.
On the IP risk, Ahearn told analysts listening to the conference call:
Somewhere during the course of this work we’re going to be looking at manufacturing sites and we will address the IP issue and some other manufacturability issues are going to come to the table.
Translation: We will do our due diligence but get real, the Chinese market (estimated by some at $1 trillion a year) is worth the IP risk. Read More »
We’ve just learned of the beta launch yesterday by NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, of its OpenPV Mapping Project, a useful web-based application that could become a favorite with PV and clean energy developers.
We actually got the news from this Tweet but we hear that a more formal rollout is expected today at the Solar Power International Conference going on in Anaheim, Calif.
OpenPV uses a Google Maps-based interface to display historical installation cost data for photovoltaic (PV) projects in the U.S. by state and county — see screen shot below.
Duke Energy announced the joint development of a wide array of solar projects with China’s ENN Group ranging from utility scale PV power projects to commercial distributed solar projects, which will also use PV panels.
Chinese cleantech companies, backed by a growing home market, are eager to export their wares and are emerging as serious competitors to U.S. and European companies. Read More »
