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Advent Solar Raises $70M

Advent Solar, which makes solar cells and modules, has raised over $70 million in a series D funding, which it will use to ramp up production to 70 MW at its new New Mexico facility. Advent claims its back contact cells – which are also used by competitor SunPower – provide higher performance at lower cost because the design allows for simpler assembly into modules and uses much thinner slices of silicon. Its technology was developed by the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratories. Advent has raised a total of $110 million and has 175 employees. It is expected to hire up to 1000 employees over the next several years. Existing investors, Battery Ventures, EnerTech Capital, @Ventures, New Mexico Co-Investment Partners and Firelake Capital were joined by new investors, ZBI Ventures, Sun Mountain Capital and Globespan Capital Partners. Rusty Schmit, President and CEO of Advent Solar said, “With the strength of our new investors augmenting that of existing investors, the company is poised to become one of the leaders in the industry. The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing […]

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ReVolt Raises $13M

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Cree to Cash in on Color Kinetics Sale

Cree (Nasdaq: CREE), Color Kinetic (Nasdaq: CLRK)competitor, will also benefit from the CLRK acquisition by Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), announced yesterday. Cree owns 4% of CLRK’s shares, making the sale the $791 million purchase price a windfall. At $34 a share, Cree will take home $29.4 million for its shares. Cree has already earned $24 million from sales of Color Kinetics stock, giving it a total of $53.4 million from its initial $12.7 million investment. Color Kinetics stock has nearly doubled in the last year.

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Google: Carbon-Neutral by 2008

Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced it will eliminate and offset the rest of all its greenhouse emissions by 2008. “This is just a start,” said Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google. “We are actively looking for more opportunities to help tackle climate change.” Last week, Google and Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC)announced an initiative to ramp up energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to 90% efficieny by 2010. In other news, Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google Inc. announced the RechargeIT initiative to accelerate the adoption of plug-in hybrids. It will tender a $10 million request for proposals (RFP) to fund development, adoption and commercialization of plug-ins, fully electric cars and related vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. It awarded $1 million in grants. Today, Google’s 1.6MW solar panel installation turned on for the first time at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. It is the largest solar installation to date on any corporate campus in the United States and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. At today’s event, Google teamed with PG&E to demonstrate the bi-directional flow of electricity between plug-ins and the electric grid. “Clean energy technology can dramatically shift how we make and use energy for […]

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