Smart Energy News

Louisville, Colo. – Real Goods Solar, a solar products retailer and systems installer, has raised $10 million in a private placement of stock, the company disclosed to regulators.

Founded in 1978, Real Goods Solar, a publicly traded company, provides integrated solar power systems to residential and commercial customers on the east and west coasts.

The company currently operates in 11 states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Missouri, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Real Goods had installed its 6,000th residential solar system by 2010, enabled more than 100,000 homes to go off-grid worldwide, and installed more than 10 megawatts of solar power on commercial projects ranging from high schools and office buildings to wineries, according to the company.

Real Goods Solar website

Real Good Solar’s SEC filing

Oakland, Calif. — Sungevity, a provider of solar system installation and financing services for the residential market, has raised $12 million in a venture capital deal, according to a new regulatory filing by the company.

Founded in 2007, Sungevity uses web-based solar analytics and satellite imagery to provide homeowners with a “firm, same day quote” without a home visit.

The company offers solar leasing programs to consumers, who pay a monthly fee to pay for the installation of rooftop energy systems. Sungevity has recently been hiring hundreds of people, while expanding its headquarters space in Oakland.

Sungevity recently acquired an ownership stake in Zonline, a new solar company based in the Netherlands. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As a result of the Zonline acquisition, according to Sungevity, the company’s solar design staff will generate online price quotes for prospective Zonline customers.

Image credit: Sungevity

Sungevity website

Lawrence, Mass. — Solectria Renewables, a Lawrence-based manufacturer of solar power inverters, announced that it plans to expand its workforce by 50% in 2012, after having expanded its team by over 65% through 2011.

Solectria makes grid-tied photovoltaic inverters for residential, commercial and utility-scale solar installations. Its line of products supports power systems ranging from 1 kW residential systems to multi-megawatt solar farms.

Founded as a spinoff in 2005 from Solectria Corp., which was sold to Azure Dynamics. Solectria Renewables moved from electric vehicles to photovoltaics, carrying the inverter technology utilized in the Solectria Corporation EV’s to manufacture PV inverters. T

In addition to PV inverters, Solectria Renewables also offers string combiners and web-based monitoring systems, which provide customers with the opportunity to view their solar system performance in various ways.

Solectria Renewables website

Sunnyvale, Calif. – AQT Solar, a Sunnyvale-based maker of thin-film solar cells, has raised $18.7 million in additional venture capital, according to a new filing by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Founded in 2007, AQT is currently planning to establish a major manufacturing facility in an existing 184,000-square-foot building near Columbia, S.C. The facility will have an annual manufacturing capacity of 1,000 megawatts and employ up to 1,000 workers, the company’s CEO, Michael Bartholomeusz, recently told the New York Times.

The AQT manufacturing environment is based on platforms used for manufacturing hard disk drives for the computer industry. Its modularity allows for rapid scalability in 10 to 20 MW increments “making it ideal for proximity manufacturing,” according to the company.

Last April, AQT raised $10 million from its original investor syndicate, STPV Holdings, and other undisclosed investors.

AQT Solar’s new SEC filing

AQT Solar website

Tucson, Ariz. – REhnu, a developer of concentrating solar power equipment, has raised $872,000 in venture capital, according to a new filing by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Founded in 2009, REhnu’s technology was originally developed at the University of Arizona by Roger Angel, the company’s CEO, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Kavli Laureate, sharing the 2010 prize in Astrophysics.

REHnu’s technology uses “triple junction” cells, which convert twice as much sunlight energy into electricity as do silicon cells, according to the company. Concentration cost is minimized by focusing the sunlight with large glass reflector dishes pointed at the sun.

The company’s reflector dishes, steel components and receivers are manufactured separately using large-scale mass production methods and shipped independently to an assembly facility at the solar farm. Its integrated spaceframe units are then driven out to their location on the farm and mounted on tracker drive pedestals.

REhnu’s SEC filing

REhnu website