VentureBeat

Konarka, yet another company experimenting with new-fangled technology to produce more efficient solar cells, hasn’t been able to articulate a clear business strategy in the six years since it started.

However, solar technology is hot, and the company has raised $45 million more in capital to give it more time to keep trying. It has now raised more than $100 million.

Like several other start-ups, the Lowell, Mass. company has been using non-silicon material to produce a more flexible thin-film solar cell to convert light into energy. However, it has continued to dabble on a number of solar projects, while its competitors have remained laser-focused on producing a producing a workable cell for the roofs of large buildings and other expansive areas. Even with focus, those other companies have been delayed.

The financing was led by Toronto investment firm, Mackenzie Financial, along with Good Energies. Other investors were Pegasus Capital and existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Asenqua Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and 3i.

Konarka is using a plastic, or “polymer” for its technology, and is testing it in a variety of areas, including portable and consumer products such as powering PDAs or recharging batteries on the battlefield, and in various parts of housing (windows, for example) other than rooftops. The products aren’t expected to hit the market until next year.

Other participating current investors include Vanguard Ventures, Chevron, Massachusetts Green Energy Fund, NGEN Partners, Angeleno Group and Asenqua Ventures.

SolFocus, a Silicon Valley company that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun on solar cells, continues to soak up large amounts of cash.

Two years ago, the company created a frenzy among investors, and took $32 million from investors, or more than twice the amount expected. It did so because investors valued the company so highly (meaning the company could give away less shares in return for the cash). Now it has raised $52 million more, according to a press release this morning, with about half going toward launching SolFocus Europe, a subsidiary in Madrid, Spain.

It’s one more sign of how hot solar technology is, especially new technology like SolFocus,’ which promises to produce electricity without using so much expensive silicon.

The parent company, based in Mountain View, Calif., will hold about 70 percent of the new subsidiary, with the remainder going to investors in the latest round, which include New Enterprise Associates, Moser Baer India, NGEN Partners, Yellowstone Capital Inc. and other undisclosed investors.

NEA’s Scott Sandell, the partner who helped bid up the value of SolFocus during the investment two years ago, will take a board of SolFocus Europe. The company’s chief executive said it’s easier to take an alternative energy company public in Europe, citing one reason for the move.

SolFocus will only begin selling its product in the fourth quarter of next year, raising the question of whether the company intends to go public before production, in order to tap into public markets to help it expand.

Updated

Tioga Energy, a Sunnyvale, Calif. company that wants to makes solar power financing easier for mid-sized businesses, has raised $10 million in a first round of venture financing.

It is just the latest of several players entering the hot solar market to make it easier for companies to buy solar power. Chief executive Paul Detering says the market is so robust that new players focusing on a niche should have no problem attracting customers. Tioga’s niche is solar installations of 50 to 500 kilowatts — which are mid-sized projects. Tioga seeks to partner with solar installation companies.

Leading the investments were venture capital groups NGEN Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Rockport Capital, DFJ Frontier and Kirlan Ventures.

A typical customer of Tioga’s, Detering said, might be a food processing company located in California central valley where there is a lot of sun. These companies may have to spend about $5 million to ensure a proper solar power system, research complex tax laws for incentives, and hope that they are getting state-of-the-art technology that lasts. However, Tioga hopes to handle most of these worries itself, even retaining ownership of the solar systems — so that a customer can always shift way from solar if it wants. Tioga offers so-called “Energy Power Purchase Agreements,” where it essentially charges the company a monthly bill just like a normal utility.

Here is the company’s statement.

Competitors include SunEdison, which focuses on larger installations, MMA Renewable Ventures and Recurrent Energy

Update: Turns out, Tioga is a restart of a failed company CerOx, something the company — understandably — didn’t disclose to us. Lazy VentureBeat! Anyway, CerOx had raised $17 million from the same investors for a “waste remediation” technology business, but that didn’t go anywhere, so investors changed models, and decided to go after solar. Hat-tip to VentureWire for unearthing this (sub required).

Solaria, a Fremont start-up that offers a way for solar cell manufacturers to lower costs by using less silicon, said it has raised $22 million in a second round of funding.

The funding comes from Q-Cells, the second largest producer of silicon solar cells, venture capital firms Sigma Partners and NGEN Partners, and Moser Baer, a large Indian manufacturer of CDs and DVDs.

Solaria’s emergence is significant because it wants to solve the solar industry’s biggest bottleneck: a severe shortage of silicon available to produce solar cells. Solaria’s timing is perfect. Through serendipity, it began working a way to produce more PV modules from the same amount of silicon back in 2003, before the silicon shortage began. Solaria uses standard solar chips, and unlike other players competing in the “concentration” area does not require its cells to “track,” or rotate to follow the sun. Silicon costs between $75 and $80 per kilogram for long-term contracts, which compares to just $26 per kg three years ago. If Solaria hits the market as planned by next year, and prices stay high, it is bound to have a thriving market.

Solaria CEO Suvi Sharma has proven he is a good fund-raiser. Previously, he founded and built Ivus, an early India-U.S. IT service company, with $12 million in backing in part from Silicon Valley firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He raised $5 million in 2003 from a group of individual investors, many of them in solar-friendly Europe. Solaria was founded back in 1999 by Leslie Danziger, who is chairman of Solaria.

There are other “concentration” technologies on the market, but most of them aim for ambitious rates of concentration of between ten and 30 times the regular concentration of light on cells. Solaria’s technology is less ambitious, targeting only two to three times regular concentration. Sharma says that’s what gives Solaria the ability to work with standard solar cells with no tracking.

When asked about competition, Sharma said once concern about companies developing “thin-film” solar technologies, paint-like products that are close to hitting the market, and which can be spread over large areas and using materials unrelated to silicon.

However, there are plenty of large potential customers, including Sharp and Q-Cells, producing masses of silicon solar cells. Q-Cells’ investment is a vote of confidence in the company. Moser Baer, India’s largest producer of CDs and DVDs, offers expertise in high-volume production processes, and its facilities will allow Solaria to outsource its production to Moser Baer, Sharma said. Moreover, Moser Baer has just entered the solar cell manufacturing business itself. It is building a factory that will produce 80 Megawatts a year — and so may also become a customer of Solaria’s.

This is venture firm Sigma’s first clean-tech deal.

Solaria has a pilot production facility here, and has 20 employees. It is hiring new engineering and operations professionals to its team.