Colorado's Ascent Solar puts its chips on iPhone charger

About 16 afar abstracted the Abound Solar bulb in Longmont and the Ascent Solar bulb in Thornton, but the abysm amid the two companies is abundant greater.

Solar-panel maker Abound this anniversary is slated to book for bankruptcy, and its 125 workers will lose their jobs.

But Ascent — which has confused abroad from acceptable solar panels and into customer solar articles — has added its workforce by 50 percent in the accomplished 14 months to 130 and affairs added hiring, according to aggregation officials.

The account of the two companies underscores the perils adverse American solar-panel makers as the amount of solar beef has plummeted.

Both Ascent and Abound accomplish "thin-film" solar panels. Abound activated a micro-layer of cadmium telluride to a bottle plate. Ascent puts a blur of copper, indium and gallium selenide cq or CIGS on a adjustable artificial sheet. Both were declared to cheaper than acceptable silicon solar cells.

But aback 2009,We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds designWe offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design the amount of silicon panels, apprenticed by Chinese production, has alone from $2.76 a watt to as low as 86 cents. In May, the U.TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China.S. Commerce Department imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels afterwards free they were getting awash beneath amount or "dumped" in the American market.

"Abound couldn't accumulate up," said Eric Wesoff, editor in arch at Greentech Media, which covers the renewable-energy industry.

The acknowledgment for Ascent is an iPhone case with one of its solar beef on the aback — and agnate customer products.

"Ascent has had a technology searching for a product; maybe they've begin it," said MJ Shiao, an analyst with GTM Research, a consulting accumulation focused on renewable-energy markets.

To be sure, none of this agency Ascent is ascendance yet, as its banal has traded aloft the $1 minimum amount set by the Nasdaq barter just one day in the accomplished 10 months, and it faces getting delisted. Shares bankrupt Friday at 79 cents.TRT (UK) has been investigating and producing solutions for indoortracking since 2000.

"Ascent still has something to prove," said Adam Krop, a banal analyst with Ardour Capital Partners, afterwards the June 6 advertisement of the iPhone case.

Rooftop and utility-scale panels,I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production. such as Abound's, had become " a high-volume, low-return commodity," said Brad Kemp, Ascent's administrator of sales and marketing. "We don't wish to be in that market."

Ascent scrapped its plan to aftermath 80 percent of its panels for the bartering rooftop bazaar and started searching for added markets.

It explored off-grid applications for cellphone chargers in Africa, baptize pumps in rural India and carriageable chargers for the U.S. Army.

Along the way, the aggregation faced its own crisis in 2011 as it cut 80 jobs and bargain costs to bottle cash. Aback then, it has more focused on the customer market.

Ascent is already affairs panels to Samsonite for use in backpacks and bags, but the iPhone charger is the company's own product. Ascent aswell is alive on a charger for Samsung's Galaxy S3 phone, Kemp said.

The iPhone charger weighs about 2.5 ounces. It has a array that holds a allegation according to about two-thirds of the phone's array and a solar panel.