A Mountain View, California-based solar company emerged from stealth operations on Monday.
Skyline Solar, manufactures concentrating solar photovoltaic systems for commercial, industrial, government and utility markets.
The company calls the systems High Gain Solar (HGS) arrays and has entered pilot manufacturing in the U.S. and Asia. The company said it is working to lower manufacturing costs by building with commodity materials and using well-known manufacturing processes from the automotive and photovoltaic industries.
Through a public-private partnership, Skyline Solar built a demonstration plant for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA).
To date, the company said it has received $24.6 million in Series A Venture Financing from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and several other strategic investors.
The company alos received a $3 million development contract in 1Q09 from the Department of Energy (DOE). Skyline Solar was selected as one of six solar photovoltaic technology companies to receive funding under the DOE’s Solar America Initiative.
Martha Symko-Davies, Research Senior Supervisor at the DOE's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), said, “We were impressed by Skyline's
total system approach which packages many high-gain solar design
elements into an elegant array leveraging traditional manufacturing for
large scale.”
Skyline says its HGS architecture delivers ten times more energy per
gram of silicon versus traditional flat-panel systems in sunny
locations. Skyline HGS arrays combine silicon cells, reflector
materials and single-axis tracking. The company said it uses 90% less silicon and 66% fewer parts versus traditional flat panel solar power plants.
Skyline’s board of directors includes current and former executives and board members of SolFocus, Suniva, Deeya Energy, Emcore, Cobalt Power Systems and Solar Junction.
“Skyline Solar is focused on a single goal as a company—accelerating the deployment of solar energy to meaningfully offset fossil fuel consumption. This requires rapidly achieving grid parity and dramatically improving scalability of PV systems,” said Bob MacDonald, CEO of Skyline Solar and a solar industry veteran. “We have a laser-like focus on real-world system performance and delivering the lowest cost of energy in the industry. We believe that we can help solar integrators, project developers and project finance firms reduce the cost and complexity of system installation, while delivering a high-yield, low maintenance system for their commercial, industrial and utility customers.”
