Start-up Tigo Energy Ltd. is a finalist in two US Department of Energy tenders for R&D grants that are part of the Obama administration's stimulus package. Tigo Energy develops systems to increase the output and reliability on existing and new solar installations.
Each of the tenders is worth $5 million, and they may be divided among several companies. The results are due within two months.
Tigo Energy CEO Sam Arditi and president and COO Ron Hadar founded the company in early 2008. The company has already won one Department of Energy tender, worth several hundred thousand dollars. The company also recently announced Germany's Kaco New Energy GmbH, the world's second largest manufacturer of solar photovoltaic energy inverters, would install Tigo's Energy Maximizer System in its inverters as a single unit. Last year, Kaco sold photovoltaic energy inverters for the production of 500 megawatts, which Arditi estimates is worth $500 million.
In May, Tigo Energy raised $10 million in its second financing round. "Globes" noted that the company did not even seek the financing; it was offered the funding from investors. This was a quite an achievement considering the harsh business climate in which companies are struggling to raise capital.
Tigo Energy's flagship product, the Energy Maximizer System, balances the electricity output of individual solar cells to obtain higher conversion efficiencies and adaptation to variable solar radiation. The product aims to solve the problem of low productivity by each solar cell within an array, which reduces the output of the whole array. Improving the output of each solar cell improves the productivity of all the panels, at a fairly low investment.
Arditi previously led DSP Communications before its sale to Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) and Hadar was general manager at MKS Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: MKSI).
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 11, 2009
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