With increasing pressure on cost reduction to match dramatically dropping module prices, there's a quickly growing interest in promising new solar technologies. This comes after start-ups were hit very hard during the financial crisis – from early-stage start-ups struggling to find any new investors to companies desperately looking for IPO windows.

In 2008, PV attracted over one third of all venture capital spending on cleantech. But in Q3/2008, after venture capital spending on PV peaked, reaching over $1 billion, that number dropped like a stone to less than $50 million in Q1/2009. With the initial signs of a recovery observed in the second quarter of 2009, the first PV companies for this year succeeded in going public this fall in China and the US.

PHOTON’s 2^nd PV Start-up Conference builds on the success of our
1^st PV Start-up Conference in 2008, an event which featured a number of start-ups that have since accomplished or are in the last stages of moving from R&D and pilot stages to mass production, including power optimizer company SolarEdge, cell producers Suniva and CaliSolar, and equipment maker SiGen.

This conference will provide:

• An overview on venture-capital flow, as well as technological and IP challenges
• Company presentations of promising non-public, early-stage PV start-ups in the fields of silicon technologies, thin films, concentrators and system technology
• Case studies on start-up financing from investors’ perspectives
• A panel discussion

PHOTON's 2^nd PV Start-up Conference is a forum for all decision makers – from management and leading scientists to investors and big system operators – interested in the latest on PV start-up activities.