Solyndra IPO

Solyndra, the company with the innovative circular PV design, is going public.

Solyndra, a Fremont solar-panel maker that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in March to build a massive new factory, filed Friday for a $300 million initial public stock offering, one of the largest such offerings in the past few years.

Officials with the company were not immediately available for comment. But the firm disclosed its plans in a regulatory filing after the stock market closed. The document noted that Solyndra's panels are installed in more than 100 business buildings worldwide and that it considers commercial rooftops "a vast and underutilized resource for the generation of solar electricity."

Solyndra, which emerged from stealth mode in late 2008, saying at the time that it had raised more than $600 million, assembles solar panels using glass tubes filled with a thin film of non-silicon semiconductor material. But so far it has been unprofitable, according to its regulatory filing. The company said it lost $232 million in its most recent fiscal year, which ended Jan. 3, and it was about $120 million in the red through Oct. 3.

The company is the 12th venture-capital-backed company to file for a U.S. IPO since Oct. 28, after the slowest two-year period for such deals in 30 years.

As previously noted, there are fascinating "dueling" solar production models now being commercialized. In actuality of course the opportunity is so huge with enough variability on specific applications that there is plenty of room at this stage for a variety of models (distributed/centralized, concentrated non-PV, concentrated PV, thin-film, non-silicon PV, and more).

Rafael @www.ClimateAtBay.net