AVASolar raises $104M for Thin Film Solar
By Azam on August 28, 2008
Thin Film Solar industry is heating up with the competition from AVAsolar raising $104M. FirstSolar dominance and impressive revenues is attracting interest and competition in the solar industry. AVAsolar is planning to develop thin film based on cadmium telluride (CdTe) similar to FirstSolar. A number of competitors use cheaper and less efficient based are based on Copper Indium Gallium Selenide, or CIGS technology. The Thin Film solar companies based on CIGS are Ascent Solar, Heliovolt, Miasole, NanoSolar among others. Thin Film industry is betting on a number of material and methods to develop Thin Film technology for solar industry. The Thin Film industry is relatively young and based on recent progress the future is bright for thin film solar.
“I am very pleased to have closed this financing with such a prestigious group of investors,” said Pascal Noronha, CEO of AVA Solar. “This funding will allow us to move quickly to establish our first manufacturing facility to produce cost-effective PV modules.”
AVA Solar current plans is building a plant in Longmont, CO that will employ 500 to produce 250MW megawatts worth of cells a year by 2010.
This $104 million funding was led by DCM and included new investors Technology Partners, GLG Partners and Bohemian Companies, LLC as well as prior investors, including Invus, LP.
AVA Solar, Inc. was founded in 2007 to commercialize an advanced process for manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic modules. Built upon 15 years of development at Colorado State University’s Material Engineering Laboratory, AVA Solar has developed a robust, industrial-scale, continuous process for producing solar PV modules at a cost below $1/watt, significantly reducing the cost of generating solar electricity.
Tags : Ascent Solar, AVAsolar, CdTe, CIGS, FirstSolar, Heliovolt, Miasole, NanoSolar, Solar Energy, ThinFilm Solar