Nanosolar gets another $300M

Everyone's favorite thin-film solar start-up, Nanosolar, just keeps proving how awesome they are. First they manage to take their technology from the lab to commercial scale fairly inexpensively. Then they start selling solar panels that can produce energy at near grid-parity. Now they've announced that they've got $300 M to expand their production.

I suppose it's not a surprise, if what they're saying about their technology is true. Indeed, they can't produce panels fast enough to sell them. Right now, the only thing keeping their prices high is that they can't fill demand.

Thin film solar was a $2B market this year, but it's expected to grow to $22B by 2015. So we shouldn't be surprised that investors are excited to dump money into these projects.

This investment in Nanosolar isn't being used to develop technology. As exciting as new technologies are, developing the capacity for new technologies to have a real impact on the world is even cooler. The investment will increase Nanosolar's production capacity for ultility-scale solar plants.

So, unfortunately for you and I, they won't have panels for consumers to buy for quite a while yet. But if you live in one of the many places where Nanosolar panels will be used, you might soon be getting energy from them nonetheless.

Via CleanTech