Green Wombat

Silicon Valley chip equipment maker Applied Materials, which last
year moved into the solar cell business, is participating in a $27.1
million round of financing for Solaicx, an erstwhile competitor with an
innovative process for making the silicon wafers used in photovoltaic
cells. Applied’s venture arm (AMAT) also invested in the Santa Clara
startup in an earlier round. The current round is being led by D.E.
Shaw with Mitsui Ventures, Firsthand Capital Management, Big Sky
Ventures, and Greenhouse Capital Partners also participating. Business
2.0 magazine, where Green Wombat is an editor, featured Solaicx in a
November story about the Silicon Valley solar boom by B2 senior writers Tom McNichol and Michael V. Copeland:

There’s a missile-bunker vibe you get when walking into Solaicx,
a Silicon Valley startup that manufactures the silicon wafers that are
the building blocks of solar panels.

In
fact, before Solaicx even flipped the switch on its first silicon
crystal grower, GE promised to buy every wafer the four-year-old
company can crank out.

photo: wookiee

In one of the biggest solar deals to date, Wal-Mart will buy 22 million kilowatt-hours of greenhouse gas-free electricity produced from solar arrays to be installed as a pilot project at 22 stores in California and Hawaii. The retail giant estimates the move will reduce planet-warming emissions by 6,500 to 10,000 metric tons a year. The solar systems will be installed by SunPower’s (SPWR) PowerLight subsidiary at seven California stores, by SunEdison at four stores in California and four in Hawaii, and by BP Solar (BP) at seven stores in the Golden State. Wal-Mart (WMT) will buy electricity produced by the arrays at market or below market rates and retain ownership of any Renewable Credits. RECs potentially could be worth a bundle if they’re allowed to be traded on carbon markets under consideration in California and Hawaii. For instance, a company that exceeds its limit on greenhouse gas emissions could buy Wal-Mart RECs, which represent CO2 avoided through the use of solar energy. Hawaii late last week became the second state after California to pass a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The solar companies will arrange financing and installation of the arrays and retain ownership. In SunEdison’s case, the Maryland company will finance, operate and own the solar arrays it installs for Wal-Mart. A SunPower spokesperson told Green Wombat that the San Jose company is working with a third party to finance the deal but hasn’t finalized the arrangements. When the power purchase agreements expires, Wal-Mart will have the option to renew the deals, move the equipment to other stores or buy the solar arrays. SunPower, which previously installed solar arrays at three other Wal-Mart stores, will build systems for seven stores to produce 4.6 megawatts of electricity. Each solar array will provide about a quarter of a store’s power, according to SunPower.

A solar power plant in the Great White North? Thin-film solar startup OptiSolar has signed a deal to build a 40-megawatt photovoltaic power station about 180 miles west of Toronto. The project, to be rolled out in 10-megawatt stages, will be – for the moment – the world’s largest PV power plant. Canada isn’t exactly known for its sunny skies but it does offer something solar power companies won’t find south of the border: a premium price for green electricity. The Ontario government will pay OptiSolar 42 (Canadian) cents a kilowatt hour – nearly 10 times the standard rate. In this case, Ontario signed a 20-year contract at that rate with OptiSolar’s Canadian subsidiary. Germany, Portugal and Spain pay similar above-market rates and as a result Europe is experiencing a solar power plant building boom. It’s the kind of deal that thin-film solar startups like OptiSolar need to get their technology out of the lab and into the field. Thin-film companies promise to significantly lower the cost of solar energy by printing solar cells on metal sheets. Although the efficiency of thin-film cells is far less than the solar flat panel solar cells produced by companies like SunPower (SPWR), the ability to continuously produce them in rolls of thin material is expected to significantly lower production costs.  A 6-megawatt thin-film power plant recently went online in Germany using cells made by First Solar (FSLR). Another Silicon Valley startup, Nanosolar, has attracted $100 million in venture capital fundng and is building a factory in San Jose that would triple the U.S.’s solar cell manufacturing capability. OptiSolar has remained in stealth mode, saying little about its plans or business. (Though company representatives did show up at PG&E’s (PCG) bidder’s conference in April where the California utility solicited offers to build renewable energy power plants.)

photo: green wombat

The land rush to build solar power plants in California is attracting prospectors from around the world. PG&E (PCG) earlier this month held its annual bidder’s conference to solicit proposals to supply the utility renewable energy. Green Wombat has obtained a partial list of attendees and it shows that everyone from Silicon Valley startups to Spanish solar power station operators are looking to cash in on the state’s growing demand for green electricity. Among those present:

• OptiSolar, a Bay Area thin-film solar startup.
• Bright Source Energy, the new incarnation of solar pioneer Luz, which built nine solar power plants (photo above) in the Mojave in the 1980s.
• FPL Energy (FPL), the renewable energy division of utility FPL and the current operator of seven of the old Luz plants.
• Green Volts, a San Francisco-based concentrating photovoltaic solar startup.
• Solucar Power, the U.S. subsidiary of Spanish solar power station operator Abengoa.
• SolarMission Technologies, the U.S. arm of Australian solar tower company EnviroMission.
• Boeing (BA), whose Spectrolab subsidiary makes high-efficiency solar cells. In the 1980s Boeing experimented with Stirling dishes designed to produce utility-scale solar energy.
• SunEdison, the Maryland solar developer which just broke ground on an 8-megawatt photovoltaic power station in Colorado to supply green electrons to utility Xcel Energy (XEL).
• Sempra Generation, the power plant subsidiary of energy giant Sempra Energy (SRE), which owns one California’s largest utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric.

Other participants came from China (Solarfun) and Japan (J-POWER USA Development). In the 2007 request for proposals, PG&E is looking for bids to build up to 800 megawatts of renewable energy.

Solar panel maker SunPower’s (SPWR) acquisition last year of solar systems installer PowerLight is looking more and more like a savvy move, judging by the first quarter earnings the San Jose company released Thursday. It was the first earnings report since the deal closed, and it was no coincidence that revenues jumped 92 percent over the previous quarter and that SunPower said it was on track to take in more than a billion dollars in 2008. Based up the road in Berkeley, PowerLight installs large commercial solar arrays and lately has been expanding into photovoltaic solar power plants. Last month a 11-megawatt solar plant it built in Portugal opened. Just this week, PowerLight broke ground on a 15-megawatt solar power station in Nevada and announced that it is building or supplying equipment to PV power plants in Spain that will produce a total of 61 megawatts. (About 35 percent of SunPower’s revenues came from Spain in the first quarter, according to ThinkEquity.) Closer to home, PowerLight recently installed a 1.3-megawatt rooftop array on two Tiffany’s (TIF) warehouses in New Jersey and signed a deal to build a 1-megawatt system for chip equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT) at its Silicon Valley campus. SunPower CEO Tom Werner said in a statement that the company anticipates that by 2012 it will have cut in half the cost of an installed solar array by integrating its high efficiency solar cells with PowerLight’s systems.