Solyndra Proves Creative Solar Designs Are a Hit With Investors

(MoneyWatch)  An innovative rooftop solar design for that looks like a cross between a row of fluorescent tube lights and a traditional solar panel, made by a startup called Solyndra, is receiving an avalance of support from private investors, and marks what may be a big industry trend for the future.

Solyndra appears to have won $219 million in financing atop its previous $600 million haul, according to an SEC filing reported by peHUB. The money makes it one of the most heavily-funded solar technologies in existence. But it's also one of the most unique.

What Solyndra has done is take an emerging technology, a form of thin-film solar called CIGS, and take it a step further. The thin-film material is wrapped around a tube, which is surrounded by optics that capture and distribute sunlight across the film. The design means that the panels don't have to be tilted toward the sun, and has some other advantages, like being more resistant to gusts of wind.

Does it work? Is it better than existing solar panels? Nobody is certain yet, probably not even the investors who are risking heaps of money on the company -- there's simply no way to tell how well a new technology performs without years of real-world usage. When investors put money into traditional panel-makers, they know more or less what they're getting into. There's simply more risk to going with innovative designs.

Whether investors really took the risk to put an additional $219 million into Solyndra is even open to question -- the company is notoriously secretive, and there's a possibility that the money is part of the $600 million that was already disclosed. Greentech Media suggests that some potential investors have indeed shied away from the company, in large part because of the risk.

But there are always people willing to put their money at stake, even in a recession. Alternate form-factors for solar panels have grown in popularity, with other companies like Toledo, Ohio's Xunlight (based in the same town as the much-larger First Solar) receiving investments for another form of thin-film, this one a flexible, lightweight panel (most panels are stiff, being encased in glass) despite some analysts suggesting that the technology can't succeed.

With yet another alternate design, there's Covalent Solar, a company that has gotten lots of attention for layering glass coated with organic inks over solar panels to capture more light from certain wavelengths, leaving the rest to reach the panel.

The purpose of all these ideas, and others, is simply to improve the economics of solar panels. But what really distinguishes all these designs are their risk, which implies equally large potential gains. The promise of large gains is what spurred a wave of investment into concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) a couple years back, giving the technology enough buoyancy to make it a category distinct from solar panels (which it nevertheless incorporates).

Solyndra's example shows that even in a recession, investors are willing to take big risks on revolutionary ideas, and continue pushing the idea of the solar panel into new territory. Of course, most of these bets will fail, but history suggests that when enough new ideas enter the real world, some will succeed. Solyndra, or something similar, could someday be the next First Solar -- taking money that would otherwise have gone to today's crop of solar companies.