With $300 Million More, Nanosolar Secures Place in Solar Big League

Nanosolar stole headlines in December when it shipped its first commercial batch of thin-film solar cells to a German power plant, accompanied by this future price claim: solar panels for $1 a watt.

They've sold like candy ever since. So what now?

A massive funding boost. Nanosolar has announced it has raised $300 million in equity financing to meet exploding demand, pushing its capital to a half a billion dollars.

That’s the largest fundraising for a solar startup in 2008. And it positions the six-year-old San Jose upstart as a technology leader in the race to knock King Coal off its cheap-energy throne.

Here’s CEO Martin Roscheisen (pictured) on the company’s blog:

The tremendous demand for our unique product was matched by the desire to support us in scaling its availability even more rapidly and ambitiously.

Nanosolar's latest investors include the likes of power giant AES Corporation, EDF Renewables, the largest electric utility on the planet, the Carlyle Group, Energy Capital Partners and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

The money will go to boosting production at Nanosolar's 430-megawatt San Jose plant (the world’s largest solar cell factory) and its 620-megawatt Berlin plant (the world’s largest panel-assembly factory).

Roscheisen explains the financing process:

The alliance for solar utility power is the outcome of a year-long effort on behalf of our strategic partners examining the solar industry, investigating virtually every solar company on the planet, and conducting one of the most thorough due diligence efforts on our manufacturing operation, our scale-up capabilities, and our readiness for the level of cost-efficiency demanded by solar utility power.

So why Nanosolar?

Because in an industry chasing the fast path to grid parity (when renewables cost the same as fossil fuels), the company’s unique printing press technology is seen as game-changing progress. Nanosolar explains:

Printing is by far the simplest, highest-yield, and most capital-efficient technique for depositing thin films.

The result, the company says is

the world's most cost-efficient solar electricity cells and panels.

They're also the fastest to assemble. In June, Nanosolar announced the solar industry’s first one-gigawatt solar production tool. Just as a printer prints ink onto paper, the Nanosolar press prints solar cells on flexible surfaces using semiconductor ink at a rate of 100 feet per minute. Just imagine, that's miles and miles of panels a day. The technology in action:

Yes, Nanosolar has made solar history. But competition is fierce. Within the growing thin-film industry (which today represents 14% of the silicon-dominated market), California start-ups Optisolar and Miasole are raising the mega bucks, too, among others.

And then there’s sector Goliath First Solar. The world’s largest manufacturer of thin-film started selling panels for $1.14 a watt in early 2008 – "the lowest in the industry." In 2007, the thin-film industry average was $2.96 a module.

All in all, the growth potential of the solar thin-cell market is huge. The cost competition is brutal but vital. And for the time being, Nanosolar is fast on everyone’s heels.

• ‹ previous
• up
• next ›