1). Green Jobs: Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis plans to speak at the event on Tuesday morning and will undoubtedly drop the g-bomb — green jobs. The stimulus package opened up clean power grants covering up to 30 percent of the cost of projects started in the next two years, as well as a loan guarantee program that has already funded at least one solar startup (Solyndra) and investment credits for clean energy manufacturing projects. All these funding mechanisms are supposed to keep the green jobs flowing out of the solar sector. Keep an eye on ways to tap into these funds and boost solar’s potential for job creation.

2). China Not Such a Sleeping Solar Giant: China has been the world’s largest solar-panel producer for the last two years, and looks to be expanding from being mainly a solar panel supplier to also becoming a substantial customer and developer. The Chinese government earlier this year announced a deal to build a massive (world’s largest) solar PV park in Mongolia with supplier First Solar. Last week utility Duke Energy said it has agreed to build commercial solar power projects in the U.S. with ENN Group, a Chinese company. Already at the conference this year chip company and solar equipment maker Applied Materials has announced “the largest non-government solar energy research facility in the world” in Xi’an, China.

3). Thin Film CIGS Progress: Companies developing the next-generation of thin film solar materials made from copper cadmium indium gallium selenide (CIGS) have had a long and bumpy road. Will this conference be the event where companies finally show some proof of commercial production breakthroughs? Last month thin film startup Nanosolar announced that it had moved into high-volume production and at the show this year already announced that it has developed a partnership with mounting system maker SunLink. (I’m hoping to see the mounted panel at the show). CIGS panel maker SoloPower will be showing off its a prototype of its product at the 3M booth.

4). How to Survive a Solar Shakeout: The event features a panel on this subject and the buzz throughout the conference will be about how companies have handled the recession and a solar power price drop due to the fact that the supply of solar modules overtook demand this year. One way to survive the difficult environment is consolidation, and two solar firms companies announced acquisitions last week. SunEdison, which was bought by silicon wafer maker MEMC Electronic Materials, will be speaking on Tuesday at the show.

5). Utility Scale & Centralized Solar: While many solar conferences reach out to home owners, Solar Power International concentrates heavily on the industry of utility-scale solar power. In time for the show utility PG&E announced that it has contracted with Abengoa Solar and NextEra Energy Resources for 500 MW of solar power from solar thermal technology.

6). High Efficiency, Lower Costs?: SunPower, which already makes solar panels with some of the highest efficiencies in the world, has announced what it says is a new world record in time for the show: a full-sized solar panel with a 20.4 percent total area efficiency. SunPower thinks higher efficiency can cut costs, as Greentech Media’s Eric Wesoff reported SunPower says: it “spends a little more in cell processing to deliver savings across the value chain.”

7). What Do Abu Dhabi’s Solar Panels Look Like?: Probably the same as most of the panels out there, but Masdar PV, the solar subsidiary of Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s cleantech venture, is showing off its thin film solar PV panels at Solar Power for the first time in the U.S. The company says it is ramping up production in Germany and is “considering the option of building an additional manufacturing facility in North America.” Masdar PV says that “Within the next years Masdar PV aims to become a top-3 global thin-film PV company.”

8). Look to Germany: Germany is still the largest buyer of solar tech, despite a stronger showing from the U.S. and China this year. Largely that’s because of the country’s feed-in-tariff regulation. According to Pike Research the U.S. is supposed to become the largest market for small solar energy installations by 2011, surpassing Germany. Of course there’s always lessons to learn from the leader.

9). The State of Net-Metering: A variety of U.S. states have taken it upon themselves to look to Germany to make their own net-metering laws, basically policies that allow people to sell electricity back to the grid from their own renewable energy facilities, such as a solar array or a wind turbine. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 pushed utilities to adopt net metering as a policy but enforcement and program design has fallen mostly to the patchwork of state utility regulators. So far in the U.S. 39 states have adopted programs to compensate consumers with grid-connected renewable energy systems, and New Jersey, Colorado and Pennsylvania are leading the way.

10). How to Make Solar Sexy in a Recession: In a recession, fewer people are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to put solar on their rooftops. In response the industry has beefed up its marketing in an attempt to make solar cool and sexy. As Jennifer Kho writes in the New York Times Green Inc blog, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model will be making the rounds at the show this year. And in another sign that the industry is also trying to make solar the opposite of sexy, the event will also feature Hollywood actor Ed Begley Jr as a speaker on Tuesday.

So is the San Jose, Calif.-based company in long-awaited commercial production yet? Nope, but almost. Nanosolar is calling today’s milestone “serial production,” or basically getting really close to the level of production that it needs to make its solar panels widely available. Nanosolar say it now has a monthly production run rate of “1 million cells per month.” Back at the end of 2007, Nanosolar was one of the first of a wave of the next-generation CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) thin film solar makers, which claim to produce material for a lower cost, to start producing solar cells at its factory in San Jose. Nanosolar has also spent the last year building its panel assembly plant in Germany.

Nanosolar announced last year that it had created a new tool that could produce up to 1 gigawatt of solar cells annually, with efficiencies of up to 14.5 percent. But the company didn’t disclose its actual production numbers, leading to some speculation about how much it actually had — or had not — been shipping. The company previously said its California factory would have the capacity to produce up to 430 megawatts of solar cells –- and was expected reach this capacity by 2008 -– while the German facility was expected to be able to assemble “multi-100″ megawatts of solar panels.

The only figures the company released on production levels was the “monthly run rate of 1 million cells,” so its unclear how far away commercial production it is. But today’s milestones are still an important step. Producing cutting edge technology at such a scale takes time to ramp up and commercialize and Nanosolar says it already has $4.1 billion in panel purchases from “highly bankable customers including the world’s largest utility power producers.” Likely many of those are European utilities and the company previously announced that it had sold panels to Beck Energy. The company tells us Nanosolar is also working with the renewables subsidiary of EDF, and AES Solar.

There is a need for speed when it comes to the utility scale solar thin film. First Solar has been all but crushing the market when it comes to utility deals, snagging the world’s largest solar PV plant with the Chinese government and massive deals with PG&E and Southern California Edison. Nanosolar hasn’t seemed to focus at all on the U.S. market.

Nanosolar also detailed some of its technology wins, including an update on its panel efficiency. While Nanosolar previously said it had gained efficiencies of up to 14.5 percent, this morning it says it has achieved efficiencies as high as 16.4 percent, verified by the National Renewable Energy Labs. Nanosolar says this represents two world records: “the most efficient printed solar cell of any kind” for all semiconductor and device technologies, in addition to “the most efficient cell on a truly low-cost metal foil.”

Nanosolar’s two white papers can be found here, the compay’s redesigned website here, and a fun little video here.

SoloPower also announced this month that its founding chief executive, Homayoun Talieh, is leaving and that it has selected Lou DiNardo, a partner with SoloPower investor Crosslink Capital, as its interim CEO. The news came just a few months after the departure of Rommel Noufi, who had been the company’s vice president of research.

At the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco last week, we sat down with Alain Harrus, a partner at Crosslink Capital and a SoloPower board member, to get an update on what’s happening at SoloPower and hear his thoughts on some of the changes the industry is seeing in solar investing. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Q: So what really happened with the CEO? Why did SoloPower decide to make the change?

A: [Changing CEOs] happens very often and it’s kind of the natural evolution of these companies, especially when you’re starting from nothing. This started with two people; it really was just an idea. [When a company matures and enters mass production, you often] need a different set of skills. A good analogy is a triathlon or a relay race. You need different people who have different capabilities.

Q: The company put an interim CEO in place, rather than waiting to find a permanent replacement. Why did the CEO leave before you’d found a permanent replacement?

A: We selected an interim CEO just because of timing. Sometimes it takes longer to get a new CEO — it might take 90 days, [especially because] solar is in a downturn. [We decided to change CEOs right away] in order not to lose momentum. We don’t want to miss the market window. It’s a matter of getting the right staff to get to high-volume manufacturing.

Q: Why did Rommel Noufi also leave the company?

A: Rommel was on a leave of absence from NREL and was commuting from Colorado. He had been here for a year, and it was very interesting, but he had been at NREL for 27 years and all his family was there [in Colorado]. His decision was driven more by personal reasons.

Q: Why do you think it makes sense to pursue this market – and a new factory – when supply outweighs demand and SoloPower faces a crowded field of thin-film competitors?

A: Right now, solar is in a downturn, but all the companies in CIGS are just making miniscule amounts of product, in the tens of megawatts. The ramp for product is 2011 or 2012. Then, the demand will be a lot larger because of what I call “the sleeper markets,” the United States and China, will wake up, and we’ll also see strong markets [elsewhere]. By the time we get to the 8-10 MW levels, it will be a pretty good market for CIGS.

Q: How do you expect to be able to compete with First Solar and other competitors?

A: The market is so large, no one person can meet all the demand. The right price point and efficiency, and you have a business. So it’s not about beating First Solar; it’s about being as close to First Solar as possible. As long as you’re in that zone [of cheaper panels], you can sell. And Solopower wants to be a flexible panel, not flat-plate glass [like First Solar]. You’re going to see more product differentiation going forward.

Q: Venture-capital investments in solar have declined. Is the VC appetite for solar becoming saturated?

A: There’s still a lot of interest in the next generation of photo absorbers — not just concentrators, but also multijunction and III-V materials — in better system monitoring and management and in the [energy] storage area. These areas are still very active, with the bar a little higher and a lower level of investment. [Reporter's note: Multijunction cells have multiple layers of semiconductor materials to boost their efficiencies, while III-V materials, such as gallium arsenide, also have the potential to reach much higher efficiencies than cells commonly used today.]

Q: Valuations for solar companies are down significantly. Do you think they will come back to the levels we were seeing most of last year, or do you think those valuations represented a spike and were too high?

A: Over a long period of time, valuations will go up. As long as companies are creating earnings and value, the markets we’re talking about are really large –- trillion-dollar markets. There are many areas where low-carbon energy could have a transformative impact.

Q: Some VCs have expressed concern that the government has begun acting as a VC, but may not be best-equipped to pick the winners. What do you think?

A: I think the money the government is spending is extremely well-spent money. Some will be conventionally spent -– such as in tax credits -– and some is going to be, frankly, VC money. But if you think about it, in some ways, VC creates enormous value. Even if [a venture-backed company] doesn’t succeed, the industry as a whole learns something and [the investment] creates jobs for people for two to three years, or the life of the company, and then they go on to start other companies. It’s not a return from a financial point of view [if the company fails], but it’s a different return. You could argue it provides a return by training or educating the workforce.

Arvada, Colo.-based PrimeStar Solar, which is developing cadmium-telluride films, is building its first commercial factory in San Francisco and plans to have it up and running by the fourth quarter of this year, CEO Brian Murphy said at the Intersolar North America conference Thursday. The company, which was founded in 2007 and is backed by GE, opened a pilot plant in October of last year. That plant has been making full-sized panels (about 2×4 feet) in small quantities and testing them in the field. Now, the company is building a high-volume, automated factory, Murphy said.

PrimeStar’sIntersolar’s technology was initially developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which said it had achieved a world record efficiency of 16.5 percent in the lab. It’s unclear what efficiencies PrimeStar has been getting at the pilot plant, but Murphy said the company achieved “double-digit” efficiency with mini-modules last year.

PrimeStar plans to sell its modules to utilities for large-scale solar projects, where it sees the biggest opportunity for cadmium-telluride films. But selling solar in 2009 and 2010 is likely to be a challenge for everyone. Murphy tells us:

“The reality is…very few people are buying. We’ve been hearing how the United States is going to be tomorrow’s PV market, but tomorrow is not today…It’s going to be 2011 at the earliest before U.S. power consumption is back at the level is was at in 2008, so utilities don’t have the need for additional capacity today.”

That doesn’t sound like good news for a company that plans to begin production this year. But while PrimeStar’s factory is ultimately expected to have the capacity to produce tens of megawatts and hundreds of thousands of panels per year, it will take some time to ramp up to full capacity. Murphy said the company hopes the market appetite will improve by then.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied Quantum Technology, which is developing technology to reduce manufacturing costs for cells based on copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, is building a 15-megawatt pilot factory, Brian Bartholomeusz, vice president of operations and business development, tells us. The company, which is using a technology to make solar cells called reactive sputtering, expects to begin selling in 2011, Bartholomeusz said. Applied Quantum also has achieved double-digit efficiencies, validated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and ultimately hopes to design factories that can by modular, “bolt-on” attachments to glass plants around the world.

Another CIGS company, SoloPower, also last week announced it hopes to get a government loan guarantee to build a commercial factory next year. Alain Harrus, a partner with Crosslink Capital, an investor in SoloPower, told us it’s important to work toward mass production now, even though the market isn’t ready yet: “We don’t want to miss the market window.”

Aside from the solar panels, the aircraft also will include an engine and battery pack. The panels, combined with other unnamed technologies, will enhance the Silent Sentinel’s flight-time capability, lower its emissions and help it keep silent, the companies said. The aircraft is mainly targeted at military applications, including border patrol, search and rescue, reconnaissance and air control, but also could find its way into civilian applications like traffic control, pipeline and power-line inspection, law enforcement, forest-fire detection and aerial photography.

The aerospace deal is a bit of a back-to-the-future move for Thornton, Colo.-based Ascent, which was founded in 2005 by ITN Energy Systems, a group working to bring aerospace technologies into other commercial markets, including energy. But the company has been involved in aerospace since at least 2007, when the Air Force selected it to develop a dual-layered solar cell that could convert sunlight into electricity with 20 percent efficiency.

Ascent is developing a flexible panel made of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide material deposited on plastic film (see a video simulation of its process here). In August, the company said it had reached panel efficiencies of 6-7.5 percent — using single-layer cells — in trial production. While it had completed construction of a 1.5 MW production line in December of 2007 and began trials in March of 2008, Ascent planned to wait until it could consistently produce panels of 7-8 percent efficiency before ramping up.

Two months ago, the company announced it had begun full production on the 1.5-megawatt line, which suggests that it’s reached its average-efficiency target. (In December, Ascent had bragged that its best panels topped more than 9.5 percent efficiency, but didn’t release its average efficiency levels.)

Also in March, Ascent Solar began tooling its second factory, with an expected capacity of 30 megawatts. It expects to begin production there in the first quarter of next year.

Aerospace isn’t Ascent’s only target market, of course. The company is also targeting buildings. In September, the company said its panels would be integrated into products by Texsa, a Spanish roofing firm. (It also plans to supply panels from its 1.5-megawatt line for this deal, at least initially.) And in November, the company said it would develop building-integrated solar products with TurtleEnergy, a solar integrator in Linden, N.J.

“While oversupply in the solar market has been looming for some time, the correction has been more aggressive due to the economic crisis,” Lux senior analyst Ted Sullivan said in a release this morning. At this point, Sullivan and his team expect cell and module capacity to reach 10.4 GW, outpacing demand nearly twofold. The overall market will shrink to $29 billion and 5.3 GW, down from $36 billion and 5.5 GW in 2008, according to the Lux report.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the solar industry. Despite expecting “widespread company failure,” Lux anticipates gains for thin-film and CIGS this year and significant strides toward grid parity — making the survivors more competitive than ever on the larger energy market.

Photo credit SunPower installation at Nellis Air Force Base

More Money, More Problems?: Congress plans to put $10 billion or more in economic stimulus funding into a DOE loan guarantee program that hasn’t backed any projects since it began in 2005. A DOE spokesperson said the program will move more quickly now that it has motivated administrators. — Bloomberg

Obama’s No Jimmy Carter: The new president keeps the Oval Office toasty enough to wear shirtsleeves, opting not to demonstrate energy conservation on the job. — NYT’s Green Inc.

High-Speed Rail Hops on the Fast Track: After languishing for years at the margins of federal policy, passenger rail projects are picking up speed as President Barack Obama joins states in calling for investment in rail infrastructure. — Wired’s Autopia

CIGS on the Rise: Research firm NanoMarkets projects CIGS-based thin film photovoltaics sales will reach $2.1 billion in 2016, up from $402.1 million expected in 2011. — PV Tech

Analysts at Greentech Media delivered similar numbers. They found that the fourth quarter of 2008 saw more than $2.5 billion of venture investment put into cleantech firms, a drop from the previous quarter of $2.9 billion. But for the year overall, Greentech Media found that 2008 delivered “a record fundraising” year, with $7.7 billion in investment for cleantech firms.

Source: Cleantech Group

Looking over the numbers, there are some telling trends from 2008: Both groups found that solar was by far the dominating area of cleantech investment for much of 2008, and in particular thin-film solar firms, which took the three largest rounds. The Cleantech Group says solar took a 40 percent share, or $3.3 billion, of clean technology venture investment dollars. And in 2008 the three largest investments were for NanoSolar ($300 million round), Solyndra ($219 million round) and SoloPower ($200 million round). All those companies make CIGS-based thin film solar — that’s an investment bubble if I ever saw one.

The second hottest cleantech sector for 2008 investment was biofuels, which received 11 percent of total funding, or $904 million, according to the Cleantech Group. Greentech Media says there were 18 biofuel deals in the fourth quarter, which combined delivered $358.55 million to biofuel startups. Our guess is that those biofuel numbers will be way down in 2009, given the difficult time companies are having raising large amounts of capital to build and expand biofuel plants, as well as the turning public and political good will for biofuels in general.

Following solar and biofuels, the Cleantech Group says transportation had the third most investment in 2008 with 9.5 percent of the total and $795 million; wind followed that with 6 percent of the total, or $502 million; smart grid delivered 4.1 percent or $345 million. We’re thinking, with federal policy support, both the smart grid and transportation investments will jump in 2009.

Wondering about the ever-present but hard-to-predict Chinese cleantech industry? Investments in China actually grew by a healthy 22 percent over 2007 levels, and accounted for 5 percent of the global total in 2008, according to the Cleantech Group. India accounted for 3 percent of the global total, which was actually down 20 percent from 2007. Europe and Israel accounted for 21 percent of the global total.

And per usual, our favorite list: The Top 5 venture investors for 2008:

Source: Cleantech Group (cleantech.com)

Global Solar, which in March said it was breaking ground on the solar field, previously had said the project would go live between September and November. Last month, the Gunther Portfolio reported via an anonymous source that it had actually been turned on at the end of October.

MMA Renewable Ventures, which pays the upfront cost of renewable-energy projects for commercial customers in exchange for long-term agreements to sell the resulting power to those customers, financed the Global Solar system and owns and operates it.

The system will help power the thin-film company’s 40-megawatt factory and is expected to defray about 25 percent of the facility’s power needs during the day. Any surplus electricity the system generates will flow out to the grid under a contract with Tucson Electric Power Co., which previously owned Global Solar.

In July, Tim Teich, the company’s VP of sales and marketing, told me that the factory was running at a rate of between 5 and 10 megawatts per year, with two of five lines in operation, and he said the plant was on track to reach its full capacity by the end of this year.

The company expected the factory, which opened in March, to produce about 20 megawatts of cells this year and 40 megawatts next year, then to expand to 140 megawatts of production by 2010. Teich also said in July that the company already had sold out of this year’s planned capacity by signing contracts with five unnamed customers.

The company also plans to build a second plant, expected to have the capacity to produce up to 35 megawatts of cells, in Berlin. That factory is expected to begin production this year and to reach its full capacity next year.

Founded in 1996, Global Solar is different from most other thin-film companies in that it doesn’t plan to sell thin-film panels. Instead, it will sell strings of thin-film cells that its customers will frame into panels. The company claims the business model makes it easier to transport its product.

While Global Solar hasn’t released its expected costs or prices, Jeffrey Britt, VP for technology, told me in March that the company expects its cost model will allow its customers to be able to profitably sell panels for as little as $1.50 per watt. That’s the threshold that Prometheus Institute president Travis Bradford had forecast would be necessary for thin-film manufacturers to survive a solar shakeout he anticipated as a result of higher supply compared to demand.

Of course, other thin-film companies also are aiming for low cost. No. 1 thin-film manufacturer First Solar (NSDQ: FLSR) already has smashed through Bradford’s forecast threshold, reporting a panel cost of $1.08 per watt — by far the lowest in the industry — for the third quarter.

Meanwhile, several other thin-film companies also showed signs of progress this week.

Oerlikon Solar plans to announce Thursday that a German factory has opened the first thin-film solar factory using its micromorph technology. Oerlikon had previously announced orders for its micromorph tandem solar line from Auria Solar Co. Ltd. in Taiwan, Pramac SpA in Italy and Next Solar S.A. in Greece, among other customers. The technology deposits two layers of micromorph and amorphous silicon, and the company told Earth2Tech that the technology will make it the first to hit the “magic number” of 10 percent efficiency for thin-film solar panels.

Ascent Solar Technologies Inc. (NSDQ:ASTI) also announced efficiency progress this week.

The company said its flexible thin-film panels were able to convert sunlight into electricity with up to 9.64 percent efficiency, as verified by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

While other CIGS manufacturers have announced higher conversion efficiencies — HelioVolt Corp. has announced 12.2 percent efficient cells, for example — most of those been from thin films on glass panels. Flexible panels on plastic tend to have lower efficiencies than panels on glass.

Still, Global Solar in January claimed it was the first to reach a consistent 10 percent average solar-cell efficiency with flexible cells from its 4.2-megawatt demonstration plant. It’s worth noting that some efficiency is usually lost when solar cells are converted into panels, so cell efficiencies can’t be directly compared to panel efficiencies. That means Oerlikon might still be the first to reach 10 percent efficiency for thin-film panels even though Global Solar already has produced cells with 10 percent efficiency.

Image courtesy of MMA Renewable Ventures.

The companies say that the reflective white roofing membrane boosts the electrical output of Solyndra’s solar panels, which can absorb sunlight from all directions, by 20 percent. Carlisle has already installed a Solyndra solar system on the roof of its roofing membrane manufacturing plant (see picture) and tells us the entire system went up in just one day.

This deal is in addition to Solyndra’s previously announced $1.2 billion in backlogged sales, which include contracts with German solar integrators GeckoLogic GmbH and Phoenix Solar as well as U.S.-based solar manufacturer and integrator Solar Power Inc. Today’s announced sale pushes Solyndra’s customer contracts up to $1.52 billion.

Solyndra’s special sauce is in its unique panel design. A photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound is wrapped around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is curved to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need to be carefully angled or laboriously secured like traditional PV panels.

Solyndra currently operates a fabrication line at its headquarters in Fremont, Calif., and has a planned manufacturing facility in nearby Milpitas. The 300,000-square-foot Fremont facility has a production capacity of 110 megawatts and, when completed, the Milpitas plant will add 420 megawatts of capacity.

The company just came out of stealth last month but was founded three years ago. Solyndra says it has already raised more than $600 million from investors like Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital, Argonaut, CMEA Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, the Walton Family Fund, Madrone Capital, Abu Dubai’s MASDAR and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund.

Images courtesy of Solyndra and Carlisle.

The 122,400-square-foot factory will create around 160 new green jobs, which makes it a point of pride for Austin’s mayor Will Wynn, who called HelioVolt “precisely the type of emerging leader in the global renewable energy industry that this city values.” Austin actually had to fight to get the company to stay in the state, according to local reports, and last year offered HelioVolt incentives equal to 60 percent in property tax abatements for 10 years. The Austin Business Journal quotes HelioVolt CEO BJ Stanbery as saying “From a purely financial perspective, [Austin's] was not the best offer,” but that being close to the company’s engineering was the deciding factor.

The factory will manufacture the first commercial applications of HelioVolt’s thin-film solar material, and will be able to produce solar cells that exceed 12 percent conversion efficiency made out of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) in six minutes. Speedy, but the company has a lot of competition. NanoSolar started producing its first thin-film solar product, made out of CIGS, last year; OptiSolar update: just turned is about to turn on its silicon-based thin-film solar project in Ontario, Canada and is planning to build a factory in Sacramento, Calif.; and Solyndra finally came out of stealth with its CIGS-based tubular design, which is currently being produced in Fremont, Calif., and soon Milpitas, Calif.

HelioVolt is one of the more well-funded startups out there, which could help it compete (though, the names mentioned above are very well-funded also). HelioVolt has raised at least $100 million from Sequel Venture Partners, Noventi Ventures, Passport Capital, Paladin Capital Group, the Masdar Clean Tech Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Solúcar Energia, Morgan Stanley Principal Investments, Sunton United Energy and Yellowstone Capital.

The company says it’s already delivering product and is focused in the short-term of ramping up production. Solyndra currently operates a fabrication line at its headquarters in Fremont, Calif., and has a new manufacturing facility planned in nearby Milpitas. That site is currently undergoing environmental review. The 300,000-square-foot Fremont facility has a production capacity of 110 megawatts and, when completed, the Milpitas plant will add 420 megawatts of capacity. Check out this video to see Solyndra’s automated fabrication.

Solyndra’s special sauce is in its unique panel design. A photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound is wrapped around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is curved to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need to be carefully angled and laboriously secured like traditional PV panels. The company just came out of stealth two weeks ago but was founded three years ago. Solyndra says it has already raised more than $600 million from investors like Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital, Argonaut, CMEA Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, the Walton family fund, Madrone Capital, Abu Dubai’s MASDAR and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund.

Innovalight is developing a silicon nanocrystalline ink, which supposedly will have the advantage of high throughput print manufacturing — but without the lowered efficiency that most CIGS-based solar technologies suffer. The company says its technology “could be as much as 10 times cheaper than current solar cell solutions.”

The market for thin-film solar is going to explode over the next few years. Lux Research estimates that thin-film solar will grab 28 percent of the solar market by 2012. While this seems like a big jump for such a new technology, the sector is moving forward quickly as more startups like Innovalight put their funds into production. Nanosolar and Konarka are both gearing up 1 GW solar printing production. Meanwhile, big electronics players are pushing hard into this sector, and Sharp recently said it aims to corner half of the thin-film solar market.

This new financing pushes Innovalight’s total funding to over $50 million. The company raised $28 million in Series C funding last year led by Convexa Capital, and including Scatec AS, Apax Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, Harris Group, Sevin Rosen Funds and Triton Ventures. Previously, the startup had raised $14 million in Series A and B funding.

The design wraps the photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is curved to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need to be carefully angled and laboriously secured like traditional PV panels. Check out the manufacturing and installation video after the jump to see how it all works.

Given the promise of such substantial cost cuts, the technology already has a line of customers — even though the three-year-old company has been in stealth this whole time. Solyndra says it has $1.2 billion in multiyear customer contracts on which it is just starting to deliver. The next step is to ramp up manufacturing. The plan, Solyndra tells us, is to expand total production capacity up to 420 megawatts annually. The company currently operates a 110-megawatt-per-year fabrication facility at its headquarters.

Solyndra filled its coffers with big investments from a number well-known info tech-cum-cleantech VCs including Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital, Argonaut, CMEA Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. The startup also has several especially well-heeled backerss like the Walton family fund Madrone Capital, Abu Dubai’s MASDAR and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund.

Durham, N.C.-based Semprius, founded in 2005, is working on applying that microtransfer printing process to the manufacture of a number of electronics including LCDs, OLEDs, radio devices and large sensors. The company has also been developing a multijunction gallium arsenide cell for a concentrator module for the past year and a half, Semprius’s VP of Photovoltaics, Bob Connor, tells Earth2Tech. The company’s patent portfolio, as licensed from the University of Illinois, does include the possible use of monocrystalline silicon, but Rogers tells us that there are no immediate plans to commercialize his research in silicon. However, Rogers says he has already seen interest from larger solar players, and Semprius could license the monocrystalline silicon application to a third-party developer.

The potential of monocrystalline silicon being used in thin-film solar is exciting because until now it has always come in relatively thick, brittle wafers that were inflexible and expensive. That’s why thin film startups have been looking to other materials for photovoltaics. Nanosolar is working with copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), First Solar has succeeded with cadmium telluride and OptiSolar is looking to scale amorphous silicon, monocrystalline silicon’s less-efficient but more malleable cousin.

However, while commercial monocrystalline silicon cells can top 20 percent solar efficiency, thin-film solar players are often struggling to reach 10 percent. John Rogers says that his team’s cells can hit 12 percent efficiency, and they’re still in the lab. With silicon prices coming down, microtransfer printing could be the key to cheap, mass producible silicon-based thin-film solar.

The key to the microtransfer printing technology is that it fundamentally separates semiconductor fabrication from the fragile substrate. After the “hot” process of semicom fab, a stamp picks up tens of thousands of cells at once and “prints” them onto a “cool” substrate, either flexible plastic or architectural glass. The result is a highly efficient, highly flexible solar cell that the researchers claim will be cheaper than existing silicon cells.

The company raised $4.7 million in Series A funding in April of 2007 from from Arch Venture Partners, Intersouth Partners and Illinois Ventures. In July of that same year, Applied Ventures joined with an undisclosed strategic investment in the solar startup. Connor says the company is currently seeking a new round of funding.

Images courtesy of Semprius and John Rogers.