Solar

Solar startup Stion has found deep pockets in Asia.

The Silicon Valley-based company today said it has raised $130 million from Korea-based thin-film solar equipment maker Avaco, Korean private-equity funds, and venture capital firms. Last year, Stion took a $50 million investment from Taiwan Semiconductor as part of a larger series D round.

With today's funding, Avaco and Stion will collaborate to develop next-generation thin-film solar equipment designed to boost cell efficiency and factory output. It will also create a subsidiary in Korea and build a factory to serve Asian markets.

Stion is one of many solar companies founded … Read more

Despite dropping its internal solar technology development, Google continues to put money into solar power.

Assistant treasurer Axel Martinez said today that Google will invest $94 million into four commercial solar photovoltaic projects alongside private equity firm KKR. Google is investing equity in SunTap Energy, an entity created by KKR for solar investing.

The projects themselves are operated by Recurrent Energy, a company which specializes in commercial and utility solar photovoltaic projects. With a generating capacity of 88 megawatts, they will produce about 160,000 megawatt-hours per year, or enough to power 13,000 homes.

The solar farms will feed … Read more

Scientists designing the next generation of solar cells are trying to do away with waste heat.

Two research groups this week reported advances in a technique to capture a portion of the sunlight's energy that's normally lost as heat. The advances are aiming toward a breakthrough in how much light can be converted to electricity on a solar cell.

In a paper published in Science, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported developing tiny crystals a few nanometers in size, called quantum dots, that are able to capture high-energy photons that today's solar cells don'… Read more

Thanks in no small part to Moore's Law, engineers and entrepreneurs now have incredibly powerful tools at their hands, creating a fertile environment for invention.

In the year ahead, we're guaranteed more powerful supercomputers and smartphones from the tech industry's basic building block--the microchip. But in a world where the amount of information doubles every year, computers' ability to make sense of it has never been more vital, touching every field of scientific research from robotics to satellite imagery.

Meanwhile, advances in very different fields--materials science and biotech--are paving the way for better batteries, biofuels, and cleaner … Read more

A technique first developed to print flexible electronics has helped engineers at start-up Semprius reinvent the shape of concentrating solar technology.

The company's tiny solar cells, each a dot the size of a ballpoint pen tip, have been validated to convert 41 percent of solar energy to electricity, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced yesterday. Semprius is in the process of building a manufacturing facility in Henderson, N.C., to make concentrating solar arrays using its "micro-transfer printing" technique, according to the Department of Energy.

The semiconductor printing technique can be used for many applications, including improving … Read more

GreenVolts is blasting the equivalent of 1,300 suns onto a solar cell to survive in the cut-throat solar industry

The Fremont, Calif.-based start-up today announced it has raised an additional $35 million and unveiled a redesigned large-scale solar array. The series D funding brought $20 million from industrial conglomerate ABB which will market GreenVolt's solar system to businesses and utilities.

The solar industry is undergoing a brutal price war driven by the rapidly falling price of conventional silicon solar panels. GreenVolts has designed a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system, where powerful Fresnel lenses focus light onto several super-efficient … Read more

Berlin-based solar panel manufacturer Solon filed for insolvency, another sign of how brutal price competition is shrinking the industry.

Solon yesterday said it was unsuccessful in restructuring its loans with banks. It will now seek to restructure those loans for three of its subsidiaries through insolvency proceedings.

The move follows the company's decision earlier this year to close its Tucson, Arizona manufacturing operation.

Solon is the latest victim in a wrenching consolidation that's spreading through the global solar industry.

In the U.S., once-successful solar panel maker Evergreen Solar filed for bankruptcy this summer and has sold off … Read more

MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's investment company, made its first move into solar with the acquisition of First Solar's Topaz Solar Farm, one of the two largest projects in the world.

The more than $2 billion power plant in California's San Luis Obispo County will be able to produce 550 megawatts of energy, enough to power about 160,000 California homes. Construction began last month and is expected to be completed by early 2015.

The purchase for an undisclosed sum complements MidAmerican Energy Holding's current assets in wind farms. "This project also … Read more

Solar charger kits that help power gadgets aren't new. But how about one that also enables you to brag to your social network about how much energy it's generating?

The Changers Starter Kit, which costs about $150, uses a flexible solar module and a solar battery. The battery calculates how much energy you capture, and then, once connected to your laptop, uploads that information so it can be shared on Twitter or Facebook. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das checks out the Changers Starter Kit in the video above.

This video first appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "Solar panels go social.&… Read more