Solar Energy Startup SolFocus Nets $25 Million in Series A Financing
SolFocus, Inc. announced that it closed $25 million of a $32 million Series A equity financing. Led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the round also included seed investors NGEN Partners and Yellowstone Capital. The $3.5 million seed round was completed in March 2006. The new funds will accelerate a large-scale reliability test series, the production ramp of CPV modules at domestic and off-shore factories, and securing the long term supply of photovoltaic cells. As part of the financing, NEA's Scott Sandell joins the company's board of directors. Nobel Laureate and former director of Bell Laboratories Arno Penzias joins the SolFocus technical advisory board.
"Rapid growth in the $10 billion global market for solar power is constrained by the availability and cost of silicon. SolFocus' unique CPV technology eliminates the silicon bottleneck and significantly reduces the cost of solar power," said Sandell, a general partner at NEA. "The product design combines leading-edge performance of high-efficiency cells with low-cost optics in a fully enclosed, highly reliable package. It is an innovative yet practical design that's ready for large-scale field testing and subsequent deployment."
"The strong financial support and world-class team at NEA will allow us to rapidly build out our 10MW pilot production line," said Gary D. Conley, chief executive officer of SolFocus. "The funds will also be used to significantly expand the SolFocus team. We are hiring scientists and engineers from the semiconductor, automotive, lighting and projection display industries."
SolFocus has signed a volume supply agreement with a leading supplier of high efficiency triple-junction PV cells. The agreement will support SolFocus' field test series and first phase of active deployments through 2007.
