Tech | May 13, 2009 | 13 comments

Skyline Solar brings HGS arrays to market

source: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Skyline_Solar_Brings_HGS_Arrays_To_Market_999.html

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JanforGore
Skyline Solar has announced the launch of the company and its HGS architecture after achieving key product, financing and customer milestones. Skyline Solar's HGS architecture delivers the performance and durability of tracked silicon at the cost of thin-film technologies in sunny climates thereby accelerating the path to grid parity.

In conjunction with the formal launch of the company and its HGS architecture, Skyline Solar announced that it has reached several key corporate milestones:

Construction of the Company's First Demonstration Plant-Skyline Solar entered into a public-private partnership agreement with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to construct its initial demonstration plant in San Jose, Calif.

VTA is an independent special district that is responsible for bus, light rail and paratransit operations; congestion management; specific highway improvement projects; countywide transportation planning throughout Santa Clara County. The system was completed only eight months after the company received its Series A financing.

Pilot Manufacturing and Component Certification-after a year of under-sun reliability and system testing at the company's Mountain View headquarters, Skyline has submitted components of its HGS system for certification and has entered pilot manufacturing in the U.S. and Asia.

$24.6 million in Series A Venture Financing-Skyline Solar has received an equity investment from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and several other financial and strategic investors.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Funding-in the first quarter of 2009, the company signed a developmental contract with the DOE for $3 million. Skyline Solar was selected as one of six solar photovoltaic technology companies to receive funding under the DOE's Solar America Initiative. The company was cited as developing a technology that could "make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity."
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13 comments // Skyline Solar brings HGS arrays to market

  • Solarlife
  • GreenThumb_Izzy
    • 0
      GreenThumb_Izzy  

    • As far as not being available and being held back, I think it is the general public. In all the years I have lived in the bush most people say they could NEVER live without electricity. It seemed like if the grid was available no one would go out of their way to make something else happen. I always said that when water dosen't come out of the tap and the switch won't give you electricity then some one will check it out. First of course pointing a finger at someone else. Each to his own workings and choices,it makes more inventors and ideas. I don't aways like fixing my water line or cutting fire wood, but it is all my responsibility. Izzy

    • 3 years ago
  • AveryMoore
    • 0
      AveryMoore  
    • GreenThumb_Izzy:

      GreenThumb_Izzy

      An elderly Chinese guy I knew some years back used to make frequent business trips to Asia. On his return he would show our office the latest gadgets readily available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and China.

      The points of origin.

      He always included the same sentence, "Can't sell em here!" and then he laughed.

      There was a wall, a covert barrier against new tech. We were stupid to keep it up. We should be ahead on this game.

      He told us that all over Asia there were incredible devices being made which would never be seen here, like the one he brought with him..

      Finally it got to the point that Asian manufacturers simply forgot about the American market and just set token quotas for what they shipped to us.

      Why? Between China and India there are 2 billion potential customers. Who needs a mere 300 million complainers on a downward spiral economically and with a hostile attitude to new (meaning foreign) tech?

      We keep hearing this same old song and dance about "protectionism" being bad for business - which translates to "protecting" jobs. Countries must never be allowed to do this. There must be "a level-playing field!"

      Straight to the bottom.

      Translation? WE don't want to compete.

      We're behind in tech, and every day we're deliberately making it worse. Our attitudes to revolutionary new tech are monarchist. We are so carefully conditioned to be suspicious of newness, change, that we look ridiculous and as slow to adapt as dinosaurs. The longer it goes on the closer we get to being continental fossils.

      This is what happens when you sell the farm, but only long afterwards realize - now what am I going to eat? And who do I have to buy it from?

      OMG!

    • 3 years ago
  • AveryMoore
    • 0
      AveryMoore  

    • Olskool and GreenThumb_Izzy,

      True enough, there have been various technologies around for centuries which we abandoned somewhat mindlessly. Holland's windmills come to mind, river generated power from water wheels, and so on.

      But what is new and, to me at least, one channel out of being energy hostages nation wide - is Off Grid.

      We all recognize that the less dependent on any one source of anything we are, the more resilient and powerful we become as a nation. It means that we have adapted rather than stagnated and are freer to choose how we spend out money.

      This new tech needs to be expanded and supported by everybody with the brains to want to stop being gouged and swindled by monopolies and oligopolies.
      And the people who would most benefit from such savings it happens include everybody with a business.

      Come to think of it wasn't America started by people who were fed up with being serfs?

    • 3 years ago
  • Olskool
    • 0
      Olskool  

    • what? No one jumping in here and giving pelosi and olblabla credit for the new technology they had SOOOOO much to do with?

      Since i installed a solar powered potable and irrigation water system on the reservation about what 19yrs ago. I find it less than amazing that this technology hasnt gone further than it has, a lot sooner. While some of you seem to think this great news, my feelings are just not so whooppie...

      Quite frankly they have the ability to produce thin film sheets that use more of the spectrum of light, at a very cheap price. Now they are not quite 100% but they can and do work. Why in the world there isnt a crap load of this product on the market at this minute is beyond me. Id Gladly pay you today and tomorrow if you would just give my kids and grandkids a future and do it now.

      My guess is that they have to do a ton of research and prop up the price they are going to HAVE to charge for it since its so new.... You dont think the oil barons are going to be replaced with a bunch of minimalist that dont need kagillions of dollars type of folks do you? The ugly fact is that energy is never ever going to be cheap. It just not the way the dollar ROLLS. And it sure isnt going to change any time soon.

      Sorry kiddies... back to the drawing board

    • 3 years ago
  • GreenThumb_Izzy
    • 0
      GreenThumb_Izzy  

    • I have been using solar for 20 some years in the bush but it is great to see it come to town. It is so simple, I'm so glad someone had the initiative to make a big company and move it along.
      Izzy

    • 3 years ago
  • SHAWN_RITTIMAN
  • Herbal_Minded
  • gentjim
  • artemis6
  • AveryMoore
    • 0
      AveryMoore  

    • Is it time for Current to set up a "New Energy Concepts" Portfolio? Methinks t'is.

      BTW, the US MIlitary is also (forgive the cliche phrase) gung-ho on new tech - why?

      Really very simple - National Security.

      If you can run out of it, if your country can be cut off from it, if it is somehow proved to be more toxic than useful - then you have to have an alternative and it has to be available now.

      So, unlike their political bosses, the military brass have seen the light go GREEN! and realized what it offers.

      NATIONAL security.

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
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