But other bumps can be attributed to the quirks of the industry itself: It’s a labor intensive business that’s resistant to automation and heavily fragmented.
It is crazier than many other services industries,” Lee Kesheshian, founder and CEO of Civic Renewables, told TechCrunch.
To try to address the quality and consistency problem, Civic Renewables is buying small installers and rolling them up.
“Now let’s go and put those systems in place under this umbrella.”Each company that Civic Renewables buys will retain its branding but append the umbrella organization’s name.
Because solar has been around for a while, the business plan underpinning Civic Renewables could show a path for at least part of the climate tech market.
The funding, which would go to Rocket Lab subsidiary SolAero Technologies, would help increase the company’s compound semiconductor production by 50% within the next three years.
The funding would help the company build out its Albuquerque-based facilities and create more than 100 direct manufacturing jobs, Rocket Lab said in a statement.
Rocket Lab acquired SolAero, which operates a ~115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, in 2022 for $80 million.
The company is one of just two in the United States that specializes in the production of space-grade, radiation-resistant compound semiconductors, or space-grade solar cells.
SolAero is highly vertically integrated: In addition to the solar cells, the firm also manufactures solar panels and power modules.
Now at the top of the App Store, The Eclipse App is a great companion for Monday’s solar eclipseA well-designed app designed to optimize your viewing of the total solar eclipse on Tuesday has surged to the top of the App Store.
The app began its App Store climb late on Sunday, gaining 35,000 downloads on the App Store and starting to move up the charts.
The app is currently ranked first in its category (Travel) and ninth Overall in the U.S. App Store and eighth in its category via Google Play.
Reviews are mostly positive on the App Store: There are 40 5-star reviews vs. 22 1-star reviews, Appfigures says.
You can also check your local forecast and subscribe to local events and check out other local points of interest.
Less than a week after The Wall St. Journal reported on how a Snapchat feature dubbed “solar system” was adding to teens’ anxiety, the company has responded by adjusting how the feature works.
The ranking system for paid subscribers today shows you how close you are to your Snapchat friends by displaying your position in their solar system.
However, instead of removing the feature, as it did with the dangerous and controversial speed filter, which it was sued over for “negligent design,” Snap is simply turning the Solar System feature off by default.
A more relevant stat would be how many Snapchat+ users have used Solar System or viewed the feature.
The Solar System feature was only one of Snapchat’s friend ranking systems.
Alsym wants to ‘light up homes for a billion people’ with its new batteryLithium-ion batteries have transformed the global economy, making possible everything from smartphones and laptops to electric vehicles, e-bikes, and more.
With the advent of cheap solar, making electricity has never been cheaper or easier.
The electrolyte is water-based, a departure from the flammable organic solvents used in lithium-ion batteries.
Alsym also says its batteries will be cheaper than lithium-ion, thanks to the less exotic materials and simpler packs.
Ultimately, it will partner with existing battery manufacturers, since Alsym’s batteries can be produced using existing equipment.
For years, the solar energy sector has grappled with interseasonal energy storage.
The claim is this tech does the storage more cost-effectively than any battery or liquid hydrogen solution on the market.
It enables hydrogen storage at densities approximately 50% greater than liquid hydrogen, presenting a significant advancement in hydrogen storage solutions.
A robust, reusable energy storage solution could bridge these timings, ensuring a stable energy supply when these renewable sources encounter unavoidable intermittent periods.
The firm certainly has investors’ attention: Photoncycle just raised $5.3 million (€5 million) to build its first few power storage devices in Denmark, which Photoncycle has chosen as its test market.
The modern world is dependent on a vast network for extracting, processing, transporting and ultimately consuming hydrocarbons like crude oil and natural gas.
Instead of reducing humanity’s dependence on hydrocarbons — which is impossible or undesirable or both, depending on who you ask — Terraform Industries’ solution is to produce this resource, using electricity and air, via a system it calls the Terraformer.
Today, the startup is announcing that it has commissioned a demonstrator Terraformer and produced synthetic natural gas for the first time.
Roughly the size of two shipping containers, the Terraformer consists of three subsystems: an electrolyzer, which converts solar power into hydrogen; a direct air capture system that captures CO2; and a chemical reactor that ingests both these inputs to produce pipeline-grade synthetic natural gas.
The startup says that improvements are already in the works to bring these prices down even further to ensure that its synthetic natural gas hits cost parity with conventionally sourced liquified natural gas.
Draijer said the company started off as an installer of solar panels in Spain, but after the pandemic, it decided it should offer a solar energy management system.
“Solar is not a product,” Draijer said, explaining why most Spaniards can’t or just don’t want to pay upfront for solar panels.
That’s why SolarMente offers subscription-based energy management services, which include installing solar panels without upfront costs.
“We’re using this round to really power our super app for home energy,” Gardrinier said.
But first, SolarMente wants to further expand across Spain, where its subscription solar offer just became available nationwide, Draijer told TechCrunch.
For a country with some very sunny regions, Mexico has strikingly little solar power.
In Mexico, the solar market is still nascent, which means customers are not very familiar with the technology and the market remains highly fragmented.
Then they went to South Korea to revamp CloudKitchens’ operations there before moving to Mexico for another CloudKitchens project.
Sales cycles in solar tend to be long in Mexico, Dellepaine said.
To find customers, Niko is courting large corporations to offer their service as an employee benefit, and banks that might want to improve the environmental sustainability of their mortgage portfolios.
Where Loon relied on balloons, however, the newer project utilizes Zephyr solar-powered drones.
“[Loon] got really good customer engagement,” AALTO CEO Samer Halawi told TechCrunch in a sit-down interview last week at Mobile World Congress.
Airbus acquired the technology for the fixed-wing drones from U.K. Ministry of Defence and Space spinoff QinetiQ in 2022.
Every six months or so, the system will land for a battery swap, as these still have a limited shelf life.
Like Loon before it, the company is also exploring temporary deployment for downed cell towers following natural disasters.
