panel

Solyndra, a start-up making thin-film photovoltaic systems, has secured $600 million in funding.

It's additionally secured $1.2 billion in contracts from clients in the U.S. and Europe, the Fremont, Calif.-based company revealed Tuesday.

What start-up gets that kind of funding and client promise? Basically, one that's invented thin-film solar panels shaped like old-school fluorescent lightbulbs.

Since 2005, Solyndra has quietly been developing a proprietary CIGS-based thin film photovoltaic (PV) system and a staff of more than 500 employees.

CIGS is a material that includes a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide. It's now … Read more

On Wednesday evening five of Hollywood's content producers gathered at the TechCrunch50 conference to chat about what the entertainment industry is doing to adapt in the ever-changing landscape of content consumption.

The underlying theme of the panel was the "balancing act" that Hollywood has to manage to make sure its response to pirating and user-generated content does not keep legitimate users from bring down the entire system. That said, there was very little discussion of digital rights management.

Of the panelists, Joss Wheton, the creator of the popular TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Internet series … Read more

Enphase Energy said on Tuesday that it has raised $15 million to ramp up production of its microinverters, a design that it claims significantly boosts the power output and reliability of solar panels.

Rockport Capital Partners led the series C financing, which was joined by existing investors Third Point Ventures and Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of solar equipment manufacturer Applied Materials.

Enphase Energy's CEO Paul Nahi said the company raised money earlier than anticipated because it's seeing strong demand for its microinverters, which can improve the energy capture of solar panels by 5 to 25 percent. … Read more

A press release describing a new report (PDF) says that rear-projection HDTVs, including DLP-based microdisplays, now serve only a niche market of people who want 60-inch or larger televisions. The report by Quixel research shows that in the second quarter of this year, the 60-inch and larger screen sizes accounted for 86 percent of sales of all rear-projection HDTVs; up from 32 percent in 2007. The firm's spokesman says that the reason has to do value. "The market has changed and there is no value for 42-inch, 46-inch, and 50-inch MD RPTVs, but there is great value in the screen sizes above 60 inch," said Tamaryn Pratt, Quixel Research principal.

… Read more

RoofRay is a tool that helps you figure out whether it's worth plunking down on money to put solar panels on your roof. If you've long been contemplating going solar to stick it to the man, this tool will give you a fairly rough estimate of how much efficiency you can expect and how it will affect your monthly bills based on past weather conditions, monthly power bills, the slope of your house, and how much paneling you can cram onto your roof.

It does most all of this with the help of Google Maps. It's one … Read more

A perfect speaker wouldn't sound like a speaker. That's the goal after all, the speaker should disappear and we should just hear the sound. With perfect speakers the instruments and voices on the recording would sound life-size and completely believable.

Most speakers, including a lot of very high-end, stupid expensive ones still sound like speakers. You know there's a tweeter and woofer, and the sound is coming out of a box.

Magnepan, based in White Bear Lake, Minnesota builds panel (boxless) speakers -- without conventional dome tweeters and cone type woofers. Maybe that's why its MG … Read more

Soon even more star power than usual will be absorbed by the Staples Center and Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

In an initiative to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the two venues, Solar Power Inc., or SPI, has been hired by AEG to install its line of photovoltaic solar-panel power systems on their roofs, beginning in October.

The Staples Center, which seats approximately 20,000, is home to the LA Lakers, LA Sparks, and LA Clippers basketball teams, the LA Kings hockey team and the LA Avengers arena football team, as well as host to concerts and events such … Read more

IKEA plans to pour $77 million into clean-technology start-ups within the next five years and could add "green" goods such as solar panels to its inventory, according to Cleantech Group.

The four-person, 50 million euro IKEA GreenTech fund has been operating for eight months, the report said. And it could invest in up to 10 fledgling companies in the next few years, perhaps first in Europe, where IKEA rings up about 82 percent of its sales.

Efforts to commercialize new and affordable green technologies within several years could lead to IKEA selling the resulting products among its growing … Read more