Eric Wesoff

News and Rumors From the Halls of Intersolar, Pt. 1 July 15, 2008 at 10:40 AM

Greentech Media hosted an enormously successful all-day seminar on Concentrated Solar Power Markets and Technologies yesterday at Intersolar in San Francisco. Daniel Englander reported on it here. Over 300 people attended the seminar.

But as informative and compelling as the speakers were at the podium and on the panels – sometimes the more interesting conversations occur in the hallways and at the lunch tables.

Here are some random tidbits:

• Ausra’s EVP, Robert Morgan, let it be known that the company will be closing a $50 million round C this quarter for its linear fresnel reflector-based thermal solar systems. Previous investors in Ausra include Khosla Ventures and KPCB.

• Miasole’s rumored huge funding round is still in the works. Morgan Stanley, many of their existing investors, and some new investors are involved in the reputed $200 million investment at a greater than $1 billion valuation.

• Miasole has joined Solyndra in the $1 billion valuation with a zero dollar revenue club. Solyndra is a secretive CIGS manufacturer with several hundred employees at a presumptive massive burn-rate. The Prometheus Institute groups Solyndra in the low-concentration PV category in the institute’s CSP research. Solyndra has raised massive amounts of capital based on the bright promise of its technology. According to a lawyer colleague at a Silicon Valley law firm – Solyndra had even started doing some IPO paperwork earlier this year.

• John Woolard, Bright Source Energy’s CEO, has steered his Heliostat-based power tower CSP company to big funding and to major megawatt contracts with PG&E. Despite the massive scale and technology in his firm, Mr. Woolard recommends “painting your roof white and your water heater black” as a real contribution to energy conservation.

• Solar Junction is another secretive solar firm involved in CPV. NEA is an investor as evidenced here and here. The pugnaciously non-communicative trio of Solar Junction staffers (including CEO Jim Weldon and VP Craig Stauffer) confirmed that their funding was “north of $3 million,” their goal is very high efficiency triple junction cells for CPV systems, and that the “secret is in the EPI.”

More to come…

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