Konarka gets $5M loan for plastic PV

Lowell, Mass.-based solar company Konarka Technologies said today it secured a $5 million loan from three Massachusetts agencies to expand the production capacity at its facility in New Bedford.

Konarka developed a flexible, thin-film plastic that converts light to energy. Konarka’s IP portfolio of over 300 patents include a low-temperature manufacturing process that enables the use of low-cost plastic substrate films.

The money is expected to allow Konarka to hire additional staff. The factory in New Bedford opened in October 2008 in a 250,000 square foot retrofitted facility first used by Polaroid. The roll-to-roll flexible thin film solar manufacturing facility has a future capacity of 1 gigawatt, but Konarka has not disclosed its current production.

The loan came from the Emerging Technology Fund of Massachusetts Development Finance Agency and the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust’s Business Expansion Initiative.

In the past couple years, Konarka has experimented with inkjet printing (see Konarka demonstrates inkjet printed solar cells), organic photovoltaics (see German government invests €2.5M in OPV research) and building-integrated solar products (see Air Products, Konarka to work on solar window modules).

Konarka has secured over $150 million from corporate investors, venture capital and private equity funds. In December, Konarka raised raised $45 million from Paris-based Total (NYSE: TOT) as part of a research-and-development partnership, making Total the largest shareholder with a stake of nearly 20 percent (see Total grows solar push with $45M funding to Konarka). Konarka is also backed by 3i Group, Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Eastman Chemical and New Enterprise Associates.

Konarka has also raised $20 million in government agency research grants in the U.S. and Europe.