Heliatek GmbH, a developer of organic solar cells, is receiving announced $27 million in second-round financing under the lead of the pan-European venture capital firm Wellington Partners.
Also participating in this round are the industrial investor Bosch and the corporate venture capital investors RWE Innogy Ventures and BASF Venture Capital, the High-Tech-Gründerfonds, eCAPITAL entrepreneurial Partners AG, the Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen Start-up GmbH & Co. KG and GP Bullhound Sidecar.
Heliatek will be utilizing the new funding primarily to build an initial production facility in Dresden, Germany. The company owns proprietary tandem technology to produce flexible, lightweight PV modules on a film substrate. Their weight will be merely 500 grams per square meter, instead of today’s customary 20 kilograms per square meter, the company said.
Heliatek said it product will open up a market for mobile applications, for architectural solutions and for independently supplying regions with weak infrastructures.
“We believe that truly break-through 3rd generation technologies that bring PV well beyond grid parity will be the success stories of the future, and we think Heliatek is excellently positioned to capture that opportunity,” explained Bart Markus, General Partner of Wellington Partners.
Heliatek formed in 2006 as a spin-off from the Universities of Dresden and Ulm. The company develops organic solar cells from so-called “small molecules,” organic dyes that are chemically synthesized from hydrocarbons.
In August 2009, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) certified a power conversion efficiency of 6.1% for a solar cell of this type from Heliatek.
Heliatek employs a total workforce of 30 people at its locations in Dresden and Ulm.
Two strategic investors, BASF and Bosch, participated in an initial round of financing in June 2007.
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