Financial - Page 5

UNSW Sydney has received more than AUD$6 million (around USD$3,850,000) in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Awards (DECRA) round for 2024. Among the recipients are two perovskite-oriented projects.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) is supporting 200 new early career research projects with more than $86 million in funding for this 2024 round. Fourteen of the 200 projects have been awarded to early career researchers at UNSW.

Power Roll, a developer of lightweight flexible solar films, recently announced a £1 million funding round led by Maven Capital Partners. Power Roll has been doing work on perovskites combined with its patented low-cost and high-resolution conductive surfaces Microgrooves technology.

The transaction comprised two investments from Maven-managed regional funds including a £750,000 investment from the North East Development Capital Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund, and a £250,000 investment from the Finance Durham Fund, established by Durham County Council and overseen by Business Durham.

Caelux has concluded a Series A3 funding round, securing $12 million. The funding was spearheaded by Temasek, a prominent global investment company, and attracted participation from entities such as Reliance New Energy (which owns a 20% stake in Caelux), Khosla Ventures, Mitsui Fudosan, and Fine Structure Ventures.

This new funding round contributes to a total of $24 million raised for the Series A stage. The influx of capital will be primarily channeled towards supporting Caelux’s factory expansion, intensive research and development efforts, and the forthcoming product launch. 

The European Commission recently approved, under EU State aid rules, a €89.5 million (over USD$99 million) Italian measure made available through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (‘RRF') to support the expansion of 3Sun's solar panel plant in Catania, Sicily. 

The aid will take the form of a €89.5 million direct grant to support 3Sun's investment for the expansion of its solar panels factory in Catania, Sicily. 3Sun is part of the Enel Group. The project will expand the annual capacity of 3Sun's existing plant from 200 MW to more than 3 GW. It will also introduce tandem perovskite PV technology, which will improve the panel efficiency and therefore increase the energy generated by each MW installed. The factory will be the largest solar panels manufacturing site in Europe, which will ultimately reduce the EU dependency on imports from foreign manufacturers. 

The SolarNL initiative, designed to strengthen solar manufacturing in the Netherlands, has been awarded a subsidy by the Dutch government’s National Growth Fund. The project will receive EUR 312 million (USD 340m) from the government, of which EUR 135 million awarded immediately and EUR 177 million conditionally, as well as a EUR-100-million loan.

The SolarNL program groups nine Dutch solar technology companies - Solarge, MCPV, HyET Solar, Compoform, Exasun, Energyra, Lightyear Layer, IM Efficiency and Taylor - and research organizations, targeting the development and large-scale production of circular integrated solar cells and panels in the Netherlands.

It will seek to develop and industrialize three innovative photovoltaic (PV) technologies: high-efficiency silicon heterojunction cells (HJT), flexible perovskite films, and PV products for integration into buildings and automotive applications.

MCPV said (on Linkedin) that the support includes its first GW-scale HJT cell manufacturing facility in Europe.

The overall budget of the program is EUR 898 million, of which EUR 586 million is private financing.

Solar PV equipment provider Shenzhen S.C. has announced its plan to issue convertible bonds to raise up to 961 million RMB (around USD$134 million). The funds will be invested in manufacturing equipment for perovskite and perovskite tandem solar cells, aiming to advance the company’s position in the rapidly expanding market for these advanced solar technologies.

Shenzhen S.C. intends to use the raised funds to establish production facilities for perovskite and perovskite tandem solar cell equipment in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, China. The project is projected to take around 2.5 years to complete and will have an annual production capacity of 160 physical vapor deposition (PVD) equipment, 119 reactive plasma coating (RPC) equipment, and 60 vacuum evaporation coating (VEC) equipment.

German photovoltaic thin-film tubes developer, Tubesolar, has reportedly filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings. The appointed administrator will initiate a merger and acquisition (M&A) process to find a future solution for the insolvent startup. 

The insolvency filing was made soon after Tubesolar indicated it had no sufficient financial resources to cover its short-term financial needs. It was said that salaries of Tubesolar’s employees are secured for three months through insolvency benefits.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) and REC Solar, the solar power arm of the Singaporean Renewable Energy Corporation, have launched a S$77 million (US$57.4 million) solar cell research initiative.

The project, called the REC@NUS Corporate R&D Laboratory for Next Generation Photovoltaics, will be led by two co-directors, professor Amrin Aberle, CEO of the NUS’ Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, and Shankar G Sridhara, chief technology officer of REC Solar. The university announced that the initiative will develop and commercialize “disruptive” PV technologies, based on perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells in particular.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) has issued a notice of intent (NOI) to release a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) of up to $36 million for research, development, and demonstration projects on two major thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technologies: metal halide perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe).  

The DOE stated that advancing perovskite and CdTe technologies will help scale domestic solar manufacturing capacity, strengthen the solar supply chain, and speed solar deployment.

It was reported that U.S-based CubicPV secured US$103 million in equity financing. While it is meant to support its plans to develop a US silicon wafer production base, CubicPV also said that this capital will support its research into perovskite-silicon tandem technology. 

“Today’s announcement underscores the considerable progress we’ve made, the depth of our engineering competence and the strength of our technologies to deliver a more powerful solar future,” said Frank van Mierlo, CEO of CubicPV. “We thank SCG Cleanergy for their confidence in our manufacturing goals and product roadmap.”