Californian solar company Siva Power says it has raised enough funding to finance the key component of a factory it claims will be ‘the least expensive solar panel manufacturer worldwide."
The San Jose company says it has raised the $10 million needed to construct the world's biggest capacity ‘co-evaporation source' the technology developed by Siva to apply photovoltaic material to its thin film panels.
Siva says its planned 300 MW capacity production line will start producing panels for $0.40/W and will be able to make panels for less than $0.28/W within two years, using the technology.
A press release issued by Siva yesterday (Thursday) announced the conversion of $3 million of debt financing provided by backers Trident Capital, DBL Investors, Medley Partners and Acero Capital in May has been bolstered by a commitment to provide an extra $4 million by DBL, Medley and Acero in the latest funding round.
$10m milestone reached
With the company having already secured $3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative, Siva said the $10 million would fund the co-evaporation source as well as helping it narrow down the final location for the 300 MW fab.
Siva was careful to stress California was among the global sites under consideration but, with the addition of the Chinese city of Wuxi the manufacturing heartland of former solar giant Suntech's huge panel making facilities having been revealed as a new backer for the Siva project, the smart money will be on China for the ambitious scheme.
Siva CEO Brad Mattson said the company would have to embark on further capital raising after the successful Series D fundraising round to build the rest of the factory and no timeline was announced for construction.
The company also announced thin film pioneer Dr Bulent Basol has joined its technical advisory board.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.