Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Wakonda brings solar tech and $9.5M in funding to Mass.

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Another thin-film photovoltaic technology developer has joined the ranks of the New England solar community. With $9.5 million in its first round of funding, Wakonda Technologies Inc. will set up shop in Medford, after being founded in New York earlier this year.

Investors in the company include Advanced Technology Ventures in Waltham, General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge, Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Applied Ventures LLC in California (the venture capital arm of Applied Materials Inc.) and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund.

Wakonda is developing a new material aimed at making solar cell production cheaper and more efficient. According to company statements, Wakonda’s process can increase efficiency of solar cells by up to 30 percent.

Where the firm differs from other thin-film developers, such as Lowell-based Konarka Technologies Inc. and Sudbury-based Vanguard Solar Inc., is the use of III-V semiconductor materials like gallium-arsenide, rather than silicon, amorphous silicon, or copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, the traditional materials for photovoltaics. Such materials have proven to have a greater ability to capture light than other materials, but have been too expensive for common applications and have seen use only in specialized circumstances, such as on satellites, Wakonda reports.

The company’s proprietary technology and process enable a low cost, commercial material to simulate the expensive single crystal III-V wafer, according to a company statement.

Wakonda has been developing its technology in conjunction with the Rochester Institute of Technology, where co-founder and CTO Ryne Raffaelle, leads the NanoPower Research Lab, and with Cornell University and the NASA Glenn Research Center.  Wakonda’s other co-founder, CEO Les Fritzemeier, is a former executive at American Superconductor Corp. and Rockwell International, where he worked on aerospace power systems.