AQT Solar Announces First Customer Shipments
AQT Solar, a leading developer of low-cost copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells, has shipped its first set of CIGS solar modules. The company has also shipped cells to several customers and currently has an order backlog of 160MW, approximately 50MW of which is due in 2011. This first shipment rounds out a year of rapid progress and growth for AQT, which included the grand opening of its fully-operational facility in Sunnyvale, California, in August of this year. AQT achieved this commercial milestone in just two years and with a little over $20M in funding. This rapid path from inception to commercialization validates AQT’s CIGS 2.0 model, a capitally efficient solution that leverages partnerships to reduce costs and time to market while increasing scalability and bankability. Between revenue and order pre-payments, the company is now generating cash and focusing on expansion. “We set aggressive commercialization goals for 2010 and we achieved them, capped by the delivery of our first customer orders,” said Michael Bartholomeusz, CEO, AQT Solar. “I am extremely proud of what our team has achieved to date and am confident as we enter into the New Year. 2011 and 2012 are going to be very important years for AQT as we transition past the inflection point from commercialization to high volume manufacturing.” Founded in 2007, AQT Solar deploys a proprietary process on proven manufacturing platforms to produce high-performance, low-cost CIGS thin-film solar cells.
