Green Wombat

Last year’s California Clean Tech Open winner GreenVolts is a poster child for how a startup can capitalize on the startup contest to bootstrap itself into some major deals. Working from a San Francisco office provided by utility PG&E (PCG) as part of its contest winnings, GreenVolts earlier this year scored a contract with its benefactor to build a 2-megawatt solar power station using the solar startup’s high concentration photovoltaic technology. The company’s microdishes track the sun and focus its rays on small but highly efficient solar cells. Rotating platforms each hold 176 of the dishes.

So it was appropriate that GreenVolts CEO Bob Cart announced last night at this year’s Clean Tech Open ceremony that the company had raised $10 million in its latest round of funding. The company also said that its demonstration solar power plant for Spokane, Wash.-based utility Avista (AVA) had begun generating electricity. Avista had made an earlier investment in GreenVolts and participated in the latest round, which was led by Greenlight Energy Resources.

Californians are going solar at record rates, according to a new report assessing the performance of the the $3.3 billion California Solar Initiative. The program, which began in January, offers rebates to homeowners, businesses and non-profits that install solar panels. Between January and mid-September, the CSI program has received 5,109 applications representing 160 megawatts of solar energy, according to the study by the California Public Utilities Commission. "In the first nine months alone, requests for CSI incentives are on track to exceed California’s total installed solar from the previous 26 years,"  the report’s authors write. The ambitious goal is to generate 3 gigawatts of solar electricity from solar arrays by the time the program ends in 2016.

About 90 percent of the applications received this year are for residential rooftop solar panels, but the arrays being installed by business, governments and non-profits represent 87 percent of the megawatts of green electricity that will be generated. In July, utility PG&E (PCG) was being flooded by 50 to 90 applications a day. In fact, Northern Californians have been the most enthusiastic about the solar program, judging by the fact that the San Francisco-based utility has received about 70 percent of the rebate applications.

The state currently pays a rebate of $2.50 per watt generated by a solar array. For a real-life example of the bottom line cost of going solar in California, check out the Fortune magazine story Green Wombat wrote tapping colleague Michael Copeland’s experience installing panels on his Berkeley home. But don’t be in a hurry to get that rebate – it took an average 117 days for PG&E customers to receive their checks while Southern California Edison (EIX) customers had to wait 135 days, according to the report. San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) customers got their rebates the fastest, with an average 113 day wait. One way to avoid spending months checking your mailbox is go with a solar installer that deducts the rebate from the cost of the solar system upfront, as Copeland did.

The California Public Utilities Commission acknowledged that it’s too soon to predict whether Californians will continue to install solar panels at the same rate has they have in 2007, but the commission predicted CSI would outperform past solar incentive programs.

Thin-film solar startup HelioVolt has closed its latest round of financing, raising a total of $101 million since August. The Austin, Texas, company has developed flexible solar cells that it says can be integrated into building materials like roofs, skylights, windows and skyscraper facades. With its latest round, HelioVolt has put itself on equal financial footing with Silicon Valley thin-film startup Nanosolar, a VC favorite. HelioVolt and Nanosolar use copper indium gallium selenide as a semiconducting material rather than expensive silicon. Although the efficiency of thin-film solar is less than conventional photovoltaic panels, the CIGS cells can be printed on rolls of flexible material at lower costs. HelioVolt will use its $101 million to build factories, which it plans to locate near manufacturers of building and construction materials. Nanosolar, meanwhile, is building a thin-film factory in San Jose. While CIGS thin-film startups have yet to produce a product, investors appear to be patient, judging by HelioVolt’s latest round. Among the investors are Sequel Venture Partners, Noventi Ventures, Passport Capital, Paladin Capital Group, Masdar Clean Tech Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Solúcar Energia, Morgan Stanley Principal Investments (MS), Sunton United Energy, and Yellowstone Capital.