Financial - Page 14

Oxford PV recently announced first close of Series D funding round, attracting major new investment and continued support from existing shareholders. The Company raised £31 Million - around $41 Million USD.

The round includes a major new investment from Goldwind, the leading provider of integrated renewable energy solutions in China, as well as investment from existing shareholders including Equinor and Legal & General Capital.

Brazilian state-run oil major Petroleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, has signed a partnership deal with Centro de Inovacoes CSEM Brazil to develop materials for the production of printed and flexible solar cells based on perovskite technology.

Under the research and development (R&D) agreement, Petrobras will invest BRL 23.77 million (USD 6.2 million/EUR 5.6 million) over a 30-month period. The main goal is the production of a prototype module and obtaining the know-how needed to make the industrial production of solar films with perovskite technology technically and economically viable.

Swift Solar, A U.S startup designing and manufacturing perovskite solar panels, has announced raising $4.6 million as part of a $6.6 million investment round.

The team at Swift Solar in Colorado includes leading solar technologists from Stanford, MIT, Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), and the University of Washington, with expertise in perovskite photovoltaic technology and scale-up. Swift's core technologies range from new solar cell architectures to specialized manufacturing techniques initially developed in the labs at Stanford and MIT.

The Directors of Greatcell Solar have sadly announced that a decision was taken to appoint administrators to the Greatcell Solar group of companies following sustained, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to secure re-financing for its activities.

Greatcell Solar Limited, Greatcell Solar Industries and Greatcell Solar Australia were placed into voluntary administration. The decision follows a series of unfortunate and unwelcome developments in recent weeks, including the untimely death of Chief Scientist, Dr Hans Desilvestro in a mountaineering accident on 10 November.

Greatcell Solar has provided an update on matters relating to its current financial position.

Greatcell reports that significant progress has been achieved in recent weeks; An agreement has been reached with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) on variations to a previously signed funding agreement, which will result in a payment of $425,000 AUD (around $307,200 USD) to Greatcell.

The Solar Energy Technologies Office Fiscal Year 2018 (SETO FY2018) funding program addresses the affordability, flexibility, and performance of solar technologies. This program funds early-stage research projects that advance both solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) technologies.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would provide $53 million in funding for 53 projects in the SETO FY2018 funding program. Of those projects, 31 will focus on photovoltaics research and development. Within this topic, the office has also selected projects that will develop and test new ways to accelerate the integration of emerging technologies into the solar industry.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has announced seven new Prosperity Partnership projects that will build links between the UK's research base and leading industry partners. The new projects will focus on four of the Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges (ISCF) , involve nineteen industry partners and ten universities, and will fund 50 studentships.

Prosperity Partnerships are EPSRC's flagship approach to co-investing with business in long-term, use-inspired, basic research. They are five-year, multi-million pound research collaborations on topics of national and global importance which have been co-created by leading UK universities and businesses with a strong research presence in the UK.

Greatcell Solar ("GSL") has provided an update on matters relating to its current financial position. The Company has agreed to sell 50% of its materials production assets to Dr. Yanek Hebting, the current GSL production manager who has served in that role for over ten years.

The deal anticipates a future 100% transfer of the production assets upon the completion of payments totaling AUD $1 million (almost USD $718,000) by 30 September 2019 and additional payments for FY2020 and FY2021 based on future earnings.

Ascent Solar Technologies, a manufacturer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solutions, has been selected by the US Department of Energy (DOE), supported by the Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), for two exclusive development projects.

As part of the awards, worth up to $100,000 each, Ascent Solar is to work towards commercialization of sputtered Zn(O,S) buffers in flexible CIGS solar cells and also development of next-generation, high-efficiency Perovskite/CIGS tandem cell. These projects are part of Ascent Solar's plans for next-generation lightweight and flexible solar cells.

Oxford Photovoltaics (PV) has been awarded a €2.8 million grant from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy to prepare perovskite-silicon solar cells for high-volume manufacturing. The technology consortium is by headed by Oxford PV and includes specialist PV equipment manufacturer VON ARDENNE and three German institutes, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Technical University of Berlin.

The newly funded project focuses on the optimization of the perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell architecture, to make further efficiency improvements on industrial 156 mm x 156 mm wafer formats. Importantly, this will include the refinement of industrial scale process technology as well as life-cycle analysis on the social-environmental impact of such cells.