California-based Solar company Solaria Corporation has closed $65 million in a financing round led by CMEA Capital and DBL Investors.
Other participants in the round include current investors Sigma Partners and NGEN Partners and new investors Mitsui Ventures and Savitr Capital.
Solaria said it will use the financing to meet increasing demand for its concentrator photovoltaic solar modules, which are designed specifically for ground-mounted tracking systems.
The company’s proprietary solar cells are designed to produce the same amount of electricity using less silicon than competing solar panels.
The manufacturing process starts with standard crystalline silicon solar cells. The cells are singulated into strips and roughly half of them are used to make a second cell. The strips used for each cell are attached to a magnifying optical front cover, which effectively doubles the amount of light striking the cell, thereby making up for the reduction in silicon area.
This design was considered an advantage two years ago, when polysilicon prices were high. At that time Solaria gained backing from German solar heavyweight Q-Cells (QCE.DE) and India’s Moser Baer. But as global polysilicon supply has increased, and prices have come down, its questionable whether the more complex manufacturing process is justified.
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