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Here comes Suniva

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A few weeks back I told you about Nanosolar, a company poised to make solar much more affordable through thin film technology. Now it appears that Atlanta will have it's own star in the thin film solar field. Suniva has burst on the scene with an announcement that they have raised $50 million to begin producing proprietary "wafer-thin" solar cells. The technology is being licensed from Georgia Tech's University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics. UCEP's Director, Ajeet Rohatgi, is the founder of Suniva along with John Baumstark, a tech industry veteran. Rohatgi was awarded a patent in September 2005 for a new way to manufacture more efficient solar cells at reduced cost. The plans call for the opening of a manufacturing facility in the metro Atlanta area, employing up to 100 green collar workers. Solar cells could be shipping as soon as October of '08.

Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2008 at 01:40PM by Registered CommenterBurke Sisco | Comments3 Comments

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Reader Comments (3)

I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the fact that so few people are talking about presidential candidates and their thoughts on global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be a bigger issue.

Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) live earth is also asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw a poll on www.EarthLab.com that says people care a lot about what their next leader thinks of global warming. Does anyone know of another poll or other results about this subject?

Here is the page where I saw the EarthLab poll: http://www.earthlab.com/life.aspx. This is a pretty legit website; they are endorsed by Al Gore and the alliance for climate protection and they have a carbon footprint calculator. Does anyone have a strong opinion about this like I do? No matter what your political affiliation is or who you vote for this is an important issue for our environment, our economy and for homeland security.
February 6, 2008 | Unregistered Commenteral
Considering that every single hour the sun shines it provides enough energy to the earth to meet mankind's total power needs for a year, and that every 1 MW of solar generated power capacity that comes on line that displaces 1 MW of coal-fired electric capacity saves about 40 million gallons of fresh water per year and 3.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide, why did Congress not pass the energy tax credits to move us towards this alternative? The solar technology is moving towards grid parity and a few more years incentives will move us there faster.
February 13, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterBA
Incentives or not, with companies such as Suniva doing their thing it will compete with cheaper forms of energy before we know it.

That said, any help that Washington would give the industry would be beneficial, as the last commenter noted.
February 14, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterBlake

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