some customers could see a full return on their investment in about five years.
Almogy said Cogenra is aiming at the broad middle part of the solar market, in between single-home sites and huge power-plant scale installations.
To facilitate sales, Cogenra is also prepared to offer heat and power purchase agreements, under which it would finance and operate installations in lease-back arrangement with customers. Toward that end it has attracted chief marketing officer Preston Roper, formerly of San Francisco-based Tioga Energy, a solar installer with long experience using purchase power agreements..
In addition to Roper and Almogy—who is a veteran of Applied Materials, the semiconductor tool-maker that has entered the photovoltaic space—other key management players include chief operating officer Ratson Morad, a veteran of Solyndra, another solar startup.
Other backers include Pierre Lamond, a partner at Khosla Ventures, and Dan Maydan, the former president of Applied Materials.
While competitors are also starting to combine thermal heat and photovoltaics into a single system, Almogy said Cogenra is furthest along in certification by standards-setting bodies. He said the 30-person company has other deals in the pipeline, but is not ready to announce them.
Here’s a six-minute video introduction made by Cogenra Solar.
Why Solar Cogeneration? from Stephen Harper on Vimeo.
