When NanoSolar was founded in 2002, the Palo Alto (Calif.) solar-energy startup drew plenty of skepticism. After all, the dot-com bubble had been reduced to a soap stain two years earlier, just months after 34-year-old NanoSolar founder and Chief Executive Officer Martin Roscheisen had sold his e-mail list service eGroups to Yahoo! (YHOO) for $450 million. Now he was jumping right into the next hyped-up sector: alternative energy.
It didn't help that NanoSolar's investors included Google (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Benchmark Capital, the venture-capital firm that struck e-gold with eBay (EBAY). What did a bunch of dot-com millionaires know about solar energy?
Quite a bit, it turns out. Three years later, things are looking much brighter. In the next six weeks, NanoSolar plans to begin building a factory in the San Francisco Bay area that could pump out as many as 200 million solar cells—semiconductors that convert sunlight to electricity—each year. That will be enough to fill 2 million average-sized panels.
NanoSolar's management claim the company's printing process is less expensive and more efficient than vacuum-based processes that have been used to make most thin-film cells in the past. And they say their cells will generate as much electricity as silicon cells—at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost. "We will be the cost leader," says Brian Sager, co-founder and vice-president of finance and corporate development.
What makes him so sure? First, a recent worldwide shortage of polysilicon has caused a scarcity of silicon solar cells and driven up prices. Second, NanoSolar has assembled a fortress-like portfolio of patents and trade secrets to keep its ink, product design, and printing process proprietary. The company believes no one will be able to copy what it is doing.
Another big plus for the company is the talent that comes along with its latest financing. Investors in the round include heavy hitters from the solar industry. Stuttgart private-equity firm Grazia Equity previously funded the world's largest installer of solar panels, Hamburg-based Conergy. Dimbach (Germany)-based Beck Energy designs and builds solar-power plants. And Christian Reitberger, a Munich-based partner at global private-equity firm Apax Partners, was an early investor in Thalheim (Germany)-based Q-Cells, the world's largest independent maker of silicon-based solar cells.
The keen German interest is no coincidence. With a 47% share, Germany is the world's largest solar heating market. The country's Environment Ministry subsidizes about 40% of the outlay for solar plants that heat drinking water. About one-quarter of NanoSolar's recent $100 million financing consists of subsidies and incentives from various governments, including Germany's. Now, NanoSolar just needs to make all that support pay off.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-06-25/bright-days-for-nanosolar
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