Less than a year after raising its first venture money for a pilot manufacturing program, thin-film solar material developer Xunlight Corp. announced on Friday that it has raised $22 million in a Series B round to move into full production mode.
The Toledo, Ohio-based company landed Trident Capital of Palo Alto, Calif., as lead investor, joining Emerald Technology Ventures AG of Zurich and NGP Energy Technology Partners of Washington, which backed the company's $7 million first round in July. The new round is earmarked for completing construction of a plant using proprietary process technology to manufacture flexible, thin-film amorphous silicon solar modules. Amorphous silicon is a noncrystalline form of the material often used in photovoltaics.
Xunlight CEO Xunming Deng, who co-founded the company along with his wife Liwei Xu, who is also the company's vice president of finance, declined to discuss the initial capacity of the manufacturing plant. He said the company's business model is to manufacture all its products internally and to sell only completed, end-user products.
Christopher Sorrels, a managing director with NGP Energy, said the plan at the outset of institutional funding last year was to demonstrate that proprietary technology developed by Deng at the University of Toledo could be adapted into a manufacturing process and to raise additional money within a year.
Sorrels said the first investment was based largely on the proprietary technology licensed from Deng's alma mater but also on the co-founders' background prior to its development as product executives at solar developer Energy Conversion Devices Inc. of Rochester Hills, Mich.
"We were attracted by Deng's reputation as one of the foremost experts in the world on amorphous silicon and the differentiated nature of the product, but also by the fact that he had experience on the production side," Sorrels said. "We had planned to raise this particular money to build a production line if they could demonstrate that the technology could be scaled, and they have done that."
Xunlight's technology was developed with the aid of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energies Laboratory, Air Force Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, and Ohio Department of Development. It centers on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition systems for creating thin-film silicon that the company claims are cheaper, more efficient and more flexible than existing products. The company also claims its products are unique enough that could to claim major market share in end-use solar modules, selling directly to solar system integrators, building companies and building materials distributors.
Deng said the company's plans are to return to the capital markets relatively quickly as demand for its products grows, but Sorrels said the company is structured to keep its burn rate low.
"Raising additional money is certainly expected to scale and build capacity," Sorrels said. "But they have a very compelling cost structure that would allow us to operate without having to raise money if necessary." -- Clifford Carlsen
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