tisdag 31 mars 2009

Solar power companies see lights in the tunnel

The optimism remains in a lot of Swedish cleantech companies, and solar power companies are no exception. For example, Climatewell is a Swedish cleantech company with a factory in Spain. With new investments in the fabric they are multiplying their production rate. Stockholm based Midsummer is another company using the sun as a direct source of energy, with a fully-automated production technology as their competitive advantage. The method is borrow from the cd/dvd industries. Recently, Midsummer was chosen as one of te most interesting technology companies in Sweden at a venture capital event. They are looking for additional financing to be able to scale up the production to commercial levels next year.

The most spectacular news however might be the articles about Ripasso Energi AB. Ripasso intends to use Stirling engines for solar power generation. The use of the stirling engine is an increasing trend in the solar tech sector, other proponents include Swedish Cleanergy. Ripasso pretends to use an engine earlier used in Swedish submarines. Another interesting aspect is the owner of Ripasso, former Ericsson CEO Sven-Christer Nilsson. According to a recent public funding application, their pretensions are far from modest: "to make Sweden a world leader in the area of Concentrated Solar Power".