Innovalight & Silicon Valley's green economy

Siliconbeat.com reports:

There may have been doubt about it until now, but Silicon Valley steadily is gaining status as a leading center of innovation for green technologies -- especially in solar.

Innovalight, a Santa Clara solar company, has announced it has raised an additional $7.5 million in venture financing.

The company says it has come up with a new way to build solar energy modules from the popular, prevalent silicon. Only, it won't do it using silicon in its costly, inflexible crystalline wafer state. It will reduce the silicon to nanosize crystal dots, so that it can be used as a sort of ink, where it can be painted onto surfaces.

This is intriguing, because it threatens to do an end-run around all the other companies that are working on nano-solar technologies based on materials other than silicon, such as Konarka and Nanosolar.

Here's a good article in Time about Innovalight.

Tags: Innovalight, startup, funding, solar, green technology