Alta Devices Inc. announced it has raised $72 million to focus on improving the production economics of high efficiency solar PV (photovoltaic) applications.
In addition to breakthroughs in advanced technology, the company is focused on manufacturing and form factor breakthroughs. The new funds are being used to continue moving toward commercialization.
There are a number of advanced materials that could demonstrate higher solar conversion efficiency than silicon, said Christopher Norris, Altas CEO. To date, the challenge of these materials is that they have been expensive to produce and difficult to implement. Therefore, they are not currently an economic solution for addressing the worlds energy needs. We are working to solve this problem by leveraging new approaches in several disciplines.
Among the investors are returning firms August Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Crosslink Capital, DAG Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Presidio Ventures (a Sumitomo Corporation company), Technology Partners, and Dow Chemical. New investors are Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) on behalf of certain of its clients, Good Energies, Energy Technology Ventures (a joint venture involving GE, ConocoPhilips and NRG Energy), and Constellation Energy.
Jagdeep Singh Bachher of AIMCo has joined the Alta board; continuing board members include Joy, Norris, Andy Rappaport of August Capital, Alain Harrus of Crosslink Capital and company founders Harry Atwater, Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech, and Eli Yablonovitch, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
