Miasole Finally Begins Shipping as Next Generation Solar Gets Investment

Those who have been paying attention to thin-film solar panels for a few years will remember Miasole, one of a small group of companies that popped around 2006 with claims of super low-priced solar cells.

They were the CIGS thin-film companies, and they — the other two big stories being Heliovolt and Nanosolar — were all too ready to spout big promises, saying they’d be sending off thousands or millions of panels within a year or two, at prices below industry leader First Solar. It didn’t happen.

At least not within the time frame that was initially laid out. But now Miasole has finally gotten its panels certified and is beginning to ship them to customers in 30 countries, according to PV-tech.org. If the company’s few remaining proponents are to be believed, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

It’s telling that what would have been big news a couple years ago has come almost without a peep; as far as I can tell, nobody besides PV-tech has mentioned it. Nanosolar, which started shipping in December of 2007 but is only reaching significant volumes this year, still gets a bit of press. Heliovolt has more or less dropped out of sight.

There is a bit of convergence happening with CIGS, which back in 2006 was the cutting edge next generation, finally hitting the market — namely, that the next next generation is already arriving.

Last month I wrote about AQT, a CIGS company that is pursuing an entirely different business model requiring much lower capital outlays than the big three named above. And then there’s what will potentially develop into the next big technology play, nanowires.

Solasta, a small startup in Boston, has just taken $20 million to work on weaving carbon nanotubes into solar panels to capture sunlight more efficiently, and perhaps even more cheaply, than all the previous generations of solar technology. It’s a big dream, and one that could potentially disrupt the existing solar industry.

Just don’t believe them if they tell you the technology will be ready in a year.