Solaria has completed $22 million in Series B financing. The funding round includes investments from Sigma Partners and NGEN Partners, two leading venture capital firms; Q-Cells AG, the world’s largest independent manufacturer of crystalline silicon solar cells; and Moser Baer, India’s largest and the world’s second largest manufacturer of removable optical storage media.
Solaria’s technology platform enables the solar industry to produce two to three times the number of PV modules from the same amount of silicon material used in today’s conventional modules.
“Q-Cells is very pleased to be making an investment in Solaria,” said Q-Cells CEO Anton Milner. “We believe our investment will help ensure that Solaria’s technology can drive down the cost of solar PV and further accelerate the growth and expansion of the solar industry.”
“Solaria’s low-concentration solar technology promises to dramatically reduce the photovoltaic (PV) industry’s cost of silicon-based solar modules,” said Sigma Partners Managing Director Wade Woodson. “We evaluated many renewable energy investment opportunities and Solaria’s approach really impressed us because it emphasizes reliability, manufacturability and compatibility.”
“This infusion of capital will help us to achieve Solaria’s goal of enabling low-cost, high efficiency PV modules and systems for our customers,” said Solaria CEO Suvi Sharma. “We are currently working with select commercialization partners and are on schedule to enter high-volume production in 2007.”
Solaria’s new form of low-concentration solar PV technology (2-3X concentration) is immensely scalable. By modifying equipment used in the mass fabrication of computer chips and other semiconductor-based products, Solaria’s technology can enable the acceleration of solar PV module production to meet the rapidly increasing worldwide demand for solar power.
Headquartered in Northern California, Solaria has offices and a pilot production facility in Silicon Valley, is working with manufacturing partners to ramp up production globally, and is adding new engineering and operations professionals to its team.
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