SolarBridge raises $19 million in venture backing

Austin's SolarBridge Technologies Inc. has raised an additional $19 million in a third investment round to support its push into solar power electronics.

The company did not disclose the lead investor for the latest round, but it said that its existing investors, Rho Ventures and Battery Ventures, participated in the funding.is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us?

The money will be used to support production of microinverter devices, which are the advanced power electronics that take direct current from solar power panels and convert it to alternating current, which can be used by a house or business or be transferred and sold to the electric grid.

In addition to expanding its manufacturing, the company plans to add to its sales support operations and to build its research and development teams for future products.

The company has posted openings for product managers and an information technology manager and engineers.

SolarBridge, which has raised $46 million to date, is a leading maker of advanced and efficient microinverters that improve the reliability of rooftop solar power systems, increase energy production and save costs by simplifying installation.

The company, which is expanding rapidly in Austin, expects to employ 75 people worldwide by the end of this year. It has announced partnerships with two major makers of solar panels,We also offer customized chicken coop. Kyocera Solar Inc. and SunPower Corp.When the stone sits in the kidney stone,, and it expects to announce more partners soon. The first panels with its inverters installed should be available for sale this summer.

Volume manufacturing of its devices by Celestica, an international contract manufacturer, started in April at its factory in Dongguan,is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us? China.

CEO Ron Van Dell said SolarBridge operates in a segment of the solar power market that accounts for about An Insulator, also called a dielectric,$3 billion a year in global sales. Much of the industry's focus so far has been on how to make solar panels more cheaply and efficiently. But now, Van Dell said, industry attention is shifting to power inverters, which can be another area for improving savings and reliability.

The company, which licenses technical discoveries made at the University of Illinois, uses advanced power electronics to create an inverter that it says will work for 25 years or longer and "harvest" more than 95 percent of the energy produced by solar panels.

Flying by the seat of his pants with solar energy

Talk about baptism by fire - you might say Tom Kepper's has occurred by direct sunlight.

A few months ago, Kepper, a former Charlotte bank exec turned green energy entrepreneur, completed his first big project: a solar energy panel on a rooftop in Kinston that provides electricity to some 40 homes.

As power sources go, Kepper's, at 250 kilowatts, is decidedly modest. Still, you'd think Kepper, 45, might have celebrated the moment as a milestone in a risky career reinvention. In 2008, Kepper lost his six-figure job overseeing construction and maintenance for Wachovia's U.S. branches during the bank's merger with Wells Fargo.

"Nah, no champagne," he deadpanned over coffee last week. "It's all so tenuous when you're trying to build a new business in a nascent industry. You can't slow down. Every day is scary. Every week is different."

If Kepper's banking life was buttoned-down, renewable energy has him flying by the seat of his pants. One moment, Sencera International, a rival Charlotte solar company, is all the rage among local startups; the next China is flooding the U.S.The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers. market with cheaper panels and Sencera is laying off most of its employees.

"With Charlotte's new tagline being that 'We want to be the energy capital,' it's the right time for us to be here," says Jay Radcliffe, regional president of the Baltimore-based Greenspring Energy, a solar company that opened a Charlotte office in March.

And Ronnie Bryant, president of the Charlotte Regional Partnership, says his team is close to inking a deal to lure FDI Energy, a Detroit-based developer of fuel cell technology. "The company is small now, but if they ever move into full-fledged production, I could see them generating 300 jobs."

That's all fine. But as Charlotte retreads from Banktown to energy hub,Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist there's also good reason to hope a newbie like Tom Kepper can figure out a way to survive, if only for the symbolism in his attempt.

Some 18 months ago, Kepper, along with a partner,We processes for both low-risk and high risk merchant account. hung a shingle for Greenfield Power, which finds solar sites for power companies, negotiates deals with site owners, installs the panels and sells the electricity to the power companies.

At the time, I wrote about his move from company man to entrepreneur - an example of the migration of intellectual capital from big local employers into fledgling sectors like renewable energy.

If Kepper ends up returning to corporate America, don't hold it against him. For all its charm, it's also true that modern entrepreneurship can be a parallel universe to Dilbert's soulless corporate cube, a lonely grind where lofty ideals are sapped by 16-hour workdays and fruitless meetings with execs at the very multinationals you were booted from.

As Kepper says: "You find the site, find power companies willing to buy, find the investor and the equipment and pull it all together. But if any one of these groups decides they don't want to do it, the whole thing falls apart."

Still, it's worth the fight. In North Carolina, clean energy jobs are growing at more than twice the overall job-growth rate. The state's new green laws mandate that renewable energy account for 12.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies.5 percent of utility retail sales by 2021.

So far, Kepper's journey has been anything but smooth.

Shortly after launching the company, for example, Kepper and his business partner clashed. "I can only say we decided to go our separate ways,Largest Collection of billabong boardshorts," Kepper says.

Today, Kepper operates as Providence Solar. And he's also tapped another lucrative revenue stream: consulting companies interested in reducing their costs through solar.

And while Kepper won't disclose details, he says he's closer than ever to pulling together his biggest solar deal yet. We'll see. Of course, even if he strikes a deal, chances are he won't be raising a glass to it.

Dramatic backdrops

Piles of fresh plantain leaves greet me, as I enter Appan Iyengar's house. He runs a catering service. Appan is also known as 'Excellent' Mani. The adjective became a part of his name, because he used to design excellent sets for Tamil plays. His engagement with the theatre began when he ran away from home and ended up as part of Nawab Rajamanickam's troupe, which offered him escape from school (which he hated), from his strict father and hunger, for his family was poor. While acting,buy landscape oil paintings online. Mani also studied how sets were designed for plays. This came in useful, when he was forced to give up acting, following an accident.

"N.S. Ramachandran, who was a partner in N.S. R. Jewellers, T Nagar, and 'Pond's Bala were among the first to give me the opportunity to make sets for their plays. Those were the days when importance was given to the sets, and the set designer would be present when the script was read out. Usually, these sessions took place in Saraswathi Nilayam,we supply all kinds of oil painting reproduction, in Triplicane."

Mani's description of the sets he designed is engrossing. Different sabhas had stages of different dimensions, so Mani had to modify his sets for each of them. And when the set involved beams, pillars, and staircases, it couldn't have been easy.

MGR's 'Advocate Amaran' had a scene in which it had to rain on the stage. Mani, together with Govindan Achari, designed the sets for the play, which opened in Madras.In addition to hydraulics fittings and Aion Kinah, Unfortunately, when the second show was staged in Kumbakonam, MGR slipped on the water and broke his leg. For a year he couldn't act. He then gave up plays and the next year, he went on to produce his own film, 'Naadodi Mannan.'

In Raadhu's 'Oru Kolai Raagam', staged by Navrang Art Theatres, the villain would meet with his nemesis, by inadvertently being knocked into a revolving chair that was actually an electric chair! That was not all. When the door under the staircase was opened, out would slide a case with a corpse in it. Lots of drama and lots of work for Mani there!

16 ft ship

For 'Dhikku Theriyaada Theevil,' Mani made a cardboard ship spanning 16 feet, and moved it along castor wheels. He also did a neat simulation of rescue boats bobbing up and down on the sea. For the climax, Mani made a platform on the stage, and covered it with canvas, which was painted to resemble sand. A hole was cut in the middle of the platform, into which the villain would fall. Clever manipulation of the canvas, gave the impression of the villain slowly being sucked in by quicksand, even as he delivered his last lines of remorse.

Sometimes the story required a set that had a touch of the macabre, for example Vani Kala Mandir's 'Chakkaram Suzhalgiradhu.' A decrepit house that gave the impression of being haunted, was set up, with peeling plaster, cobwebs, pictures hanging awry on the wall and furniture lying topsy turvy. And when ARS made his entry in a grotesque mask, the audience would be on edge.

In Raadhu's 'My Dear Kutti Pisasu,' the walls had to bleed, because it was a story about the supernatural. So balloons filled with oil and mixed with a red powder were kept behind the cardboard facades. When an actor fixed a nail on the wall, a man behind the scene would make a small hole in the balloon and out would flow the coloured oil, which, with its viscosity, had a good likeness to blood. "Before the play began, we would distribute vibhuti and kumkum to the audience, to apply on the foreheads of children, so that the latter would not be frightened by what they were about to witness,Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals" laughs Mani.

"For our play 'Pancha Bhoothangal', we had to show a car crash, and Mani came up with a brilliant depiction," says ARS. Mani made a cardboard cut-out of a car and fixed two headlights to it. The stage would be darkened, and a man in black clothes would slowly propel the car. All the audience could see were the moving headlights. A recording of a car crash would be played and the man 'driving' the cardboard car would topple it, to indicate the crash.

For Y.Gee. Mahendra's 'Sakthi', Mani designed a revolving stage. "The base of the stage weighed three tonnes. The wheels were eight inches in diameter. My sons would wear gloves when they rotated the stage. Otherwise they would get callouses on their palms. It would take us a whole day to set up the stage."

Recalls Balaji, Mani's son, "When the play was staged in Tirupur, we discovered that we would have to set up everything on the ground in the open air. So we had to smoothen the ground and make sure the tracks didn't wobble."

For Mahendra's 'Lakshmi Kalyana Vaibhogame,' Mani had to scout around for period furniture, because the set had to depict the house of a zamindar of Thanjavur in the 1940s. The clock for the play came from AVM studio, and had been used in the film 'Naam Iruvar.'

"For Mouli's 'Oru Gandhi Podum', I had to show a village street, with four houses on either side, with the audience being able to see the goings on inside the first two houses.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc."