SoloPower Names Tim Harris as CEO

SoloPower, Inc., a leading manufacturer of high efficiency thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and lightweight flexible solar modules, announced the appointment of Tim Harris to the position of president and CEO. Harris replaces Lou DiNardo, who has served as the company’s interim CEO since July 2009. Mr. DiNardo will remain closely involved with SoloPower as its executive chairman of the Board of Directors.

Harris brings over 20 years of executive experience to SoloPower and will lead the company as it commercializes its innovative flexible solar modules and expands manufacturing capacity to enter high-volume production later in 2010.

“SoloPower has focused on the development of innovative, lightweight flexible modules which add significant value in commercial and industrial rooftop applications, utility scale ground mounted facilities, and the emerging building integrated PV market (BIPV). The company has demonstrated product efficiency that exceeds current alternatives and is building the infrastructure necessary for commercialization and high-volume manufacturing,” said DiNardo. “The company now is in a position to advance to its next milestones and raise its next round of funding to expand capacity. We’re confident that Tim is uniquely qualified to lead this charge.”

“My career has been focused on building teams and ramping great technology products in cost-sensitive environments,” said Harris. “I look forward to working with the talented team at SoloPower as we all enter this exciting next stage of product advancement and company growth.”

Harris was most recently CEO and president at Celerity, which developed and manufactured high-precision capital equipment for the semiconductor and solar equipment industries. Prior to Celerity, he was CEO at Komag, which developed and built media for the disc drive industry in the U.S. and Malaysia, and was acquired by Western Digital for more than $1.2 billion in 2007.

Prior to Komag, Harris was COO at venture-backed ioLon, a developer of high-powered, tunable lasers for the telecom industry. Harris worked at Seagate Technology from 1990 to 2000, ultimately working as senior vice president, world wide technology manufacturing, which included responsibility for Seagate’s wafer fabs, slider development and operations, and OEM tape head business. While based in Malaysia for five years, Harris developed Seagate’s Malaysian recording head business into a 15,000-person operation. Prior to joining Seagate, Harris was general manager, 130mm Division for Domain Technology and worked at Memorex Consumer Products for 10 years.

Recent Developments

Using SoloPower’s patented electroplating process, SoloPower previously reported 13.76% cell efficiency on small area (~0.5 cm2) cells on flexible stainless steel substrates. Recently the company has been able to demonstrate similar results on larger cells: 13.4% efficiency on 12 cm2 lab cells and 11.7% efficiency on 178 cm2 cells from its roll-to-roll manufacturing line. Using its CIGS-based flexible cells, SoloPower has developed a flexible module, which has demonstrated aperture efficiency of 10.74%.

In January 2010, SoloPower’s CIGS thin-film flexible module passed a damp-heat test of achieving over 1000 hours at 85 percent humidity and 85°C showing minimal (<5% Pmax) power degradation. The company is confident that its groundbreaking flexible module products will pass similar tests performed by independent certification laboratories. SoloPower expects to submit its first flexible module for independent certification by April 2010. SoloPower was the first to market with a flat-plate CIGS module certified to ANSI/UL 1703 safety standards and expects to be the first to market with a certified flexible CIGS module in commercial production.

SoloPower is in the process of raising funds to support the build-out of an additional nameplate 60MW of capacity in its existing manufacturing facility. The funds raised also are expected to be used as the equity-match portion of a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in support of a new nameplate 250MW manufacturing facility in San Jose, CA.