Nanosolar

NREL Certifies 16.4% Nanosolar Foil Efficiency

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - September 9, 2009

It was May 2006 when we last released information about our power-conversion efficiencies to the public (for a cell sample on glass actually back then). We have made a lot of progress since then; so an update is appropriate.

Our lab and production teams have managed to make more progress on efficiency than we had planned on in any of our business plans.  Recall that we print CIGS onto inexpensive metal foil, that is, something that some have been skeptical can work while others have been wondering whether it can deliver efficient cells.

So we are pleased to announce that our low-cost printed-CIGS-on-metal-foil cell stack and process produces quite efficient cells: Earlier this year, NREL independently verified several of our cell foils to be as efficient as 16.4%.

At 16.4% efficiency, our foil cells represent two world records in one: It's the most efficient printed solar cell of any kind (all semiconductor and device technologies) as well as the most efficient cell on a truly low-cost metal foil (with a material cost of only a cent or two per square foot and mil thickness).

In terms of our current baseline production process, our best production rolls now achieve higher than 11% median efficiency measured as equivalent to panel efficiency, with very tight cross- and down-web uniformity.

A comprehensive description of our cell technology platform as well as NREL's efficiency certifications can be found in our cell technology white paper.

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Feeding In Renewable Energy Breakthroughs

By George Sterzinger, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Policy Project, and Martin Roscheisen, CEO, Nanosolar - January 21, 2009

At a time when many folks in Washington are running around with their hair on fire looking for schemes to dramatically increase renewable energy use by mid-February at the latest, let’s consider that what renewable energy really needs is a shift to permanent, effective policies to pursue and develop its potential.

The recent inclusion of the Federal Investment Tax Credit for solar energy through 2016 is a good example of this type of policy. But, it is just the start.

In our view, renewable energy’s greatest potential and competitive advantage is its ability to evolve rapidly and offer technologies that produce electricity at lower and lower prices with no carbon emissions, subsequently decreasing our dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

Here is one effective, low-cost approach to encourage innovation: Create a set of national Standard Offers or Feed-in Rates for new, significantly better renewable technologies. This policy would offer predictable compensation to any renewable energy generator in the form of long-term power purchase contracts, creating a streamlined administrative national framework that makes developing renewable energy projects and manufacturing new technologies highly investable for entrepreneurs and private capital alike.

The great virtue of offering a national price for renewable energy is that it would be immediately transparent and open to any technology company/developer. Currently, developing utility-scale renewable energy projects requires dealing with hundreds of private and public utilities all operating under strikingly different state regulatory requirements, and often requiring substantial upfront investments just to respond to requests for proposal.

The feed-in rate we are proposing would be set below what current renewable technologies deliver in order to focus support on breakthroughs that will drive the price of renewable electricity down in order to replace more and more traditional, fossil fuel based electricity generation. The national feed-in price could be adjusted periodically by the policy’s governing board in order to move renewable electricity through the price points that would deliver greater market share to renewable generation while avoiding excess or windfall profits at the expense of the taxpayer. For example, the set of feed-in rate price points could be set by (1) on-peak natural gas fired generation to (2) combined cycle natural gas –fired generation to (3) base load coal generation with an adjustment to reflect the cost of CO2 emissions.

Setting an initial feed-in rate at $.15 per kWh for 20 years for solar projects, for example, would draw out multiple breakthrough technologies and greatly advance their market penetration.

[...] Continue — Read the complete article on greentechmedia.com

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1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - December 16, 2008

The notion of a kilogram of enriched Uranium conjures up an image of a powerful amout of energy. Enough to power an entire city for years when used in a nuclear power plant, or enough to flatten an entire county when used in a bomb — that’s presumably what many people would say if one asked them about their thoughts.

In our new solar cell technology, we use an active material called CIGS, a Copper based semiconductor. How does this stack up against enriched Uranium?

Here’s a noteworthy fact, pointed out to me by one of our engineers: It turns out that 1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant.

Or said differently, 1kg of CIGS is equivalent to 5kg of enriched Uranium in terms of the energy the materials deliver in solar and nuclear respectively.

The Uranium is burned and then stored in a nuclear waste facility; the CIGS material produces power for at least the warranty period of the solar cell product after which it can then be recycled and reused an indefinite number of times.

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Named Best Invention of the Year 2008 by Time Magazine

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - October 30, 2008

Time Magazine just published its list of the 50 best inventions of the year 2008 and named Nanosolar’s thin-film technology one of them.

We are honored by this prestigious selection and will redouble our efforts to invent even more!

With more than 300 patents and hundreds of tightly guarded trade secrets, ranging from new three-dimensional optical nanostructures to new production tooling designs, we have always believed that investing in science and innovation is the foundation for fundamentally better technology and products.

Time Magazine Best Inventions 2008: Nanosolar Thin-Film Technology

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Nanosolar Ups Funding to $0.5 Billion; Partners for Utility Power

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - August 27, 2008

As part of a strategic $300 million equity financing, Nanosolar has added new capital and brought its total amount of funding to date to just below half a billion U.S. dollars.

Last December, we introduced the Nanosolar Utility Panel(TM) to enable solar utility power — i.e. giving utility-scale power producers the solar panel technology to build and operate cost efficient solar power plants.

The tremendous demand for our unique product was matched by the desire to support us in scaling its availability even more rapidly and ambitiously.

Today we are pleased to announce that we have received strategic backing by partners ideally suited to accelerate the implementation of this business — in the form of product supply agreements, strategic collaboration, and equity investments.

As part of the transaction, the boards of directors of AES Corporation (one of the world’s largest power companies), the Carlyle Group, EDF (the world’s largest electric utility), and Energy Capital Partners signed off on investments into Nanosolar through Riverstone Holdings, EDF Renewables, and simultaneously formed AES Solar. A fraction of the oversubscribed Nanosolar equity round also included financial investors such as Lone Pine Capital, the Skoll Foundation, and Pierre Omidyar’s fund as well as returning investors including GLG Partners, Beck Energy, and Conergy founding investor Grazia Equity. The transaction closed in March 2008.

The alliance for solar utility power is the outcome of a year long effort on behalf of our strategic partners examining the solar industry, investigating virtually every solar company on the planet, and conducting one of the most thorough due diligence efforts on our manufacturing operation, our scale-up capabilities, and our readiness for the level of cost efficiency demanded by solar utility power. We are honored to have been selected as the company of choice to partner with by such a distinguished and sophisticated group.

The new capital will allow us to accelerate production expansion for our 430MW San Jose factory and our 620MW Berlin factory. (Earlier, Nanosolar secured a 50% capex subsidy on its Germany based factory.)

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Nanosolar Receives U.S. Senate Environment Award // Getting Renewable Portfolio Standards Right

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - August 7, 2008

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and her staff today visited Nanosolar to tour our factory and present us with the U.S. Senate Conservation Champion award. We are honored to be awarded this recognition — thank you very much!

During our meeting with the U.S. Senator, we discussed the importance of getting a Federal RPS right in 2009 and fixing the state level RPS’es.

Getting Renewable Portfolio Standards Right

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the politically most digestible administrative framework in the United States for leveling the playing field for green technologies in the energy industry.

But the RPS systems we have in place today at the level of various states are ineffective because they are limited in the following three key ways:

1. They are primarily geared towards large-scale, centralized generation, i.e. power plants of larger than 50MW in size. That’s the old mindset — preferring one 300MW plant over thirty 10MW plants.

But a lot of today’s action and opportunity in renewables is in decentralized 1-10MW generation, including municipal solar power plants and other forms of power generation at the local level. No well-designed RPS should have a built-in bias against small & medium sized power generation.

For instance, in California, we have one policy framework (the California Solar Incentives, CSI) for sub-1MW solar installations, connected locally; and we have an RPS that works for >20MW power generation, connected to transmission lines. In between we have a policy gap for renewable generation of one to twenty MW in size, which is often directly connected into the municipal grid, i.e. without having to use transmission lines:

No federal energy policy should favor big power plants over medium sized ones; and the state level policies should be reworked in this regard too.

Specifically, by avoiding the substantial expense and energy loss associated with transmission infrastructure, small and medium sized power plants have an economic benefit to the public, and this ought to be reflected as a corresponding commercial benefit.

2. They have no teeth. State utilities can simply default on the agreed-upon renewable targets and pay a marginal fee. Without the prospect of a penalty that hurts at least a little bit (e.g. 10-15 cents/kWh of a surcharge) and one that will actually be enforced, the utilities won’t seriously plan on delivering on the agreed-upon objectives, and the more honest approach would be to better cut the whole RPS system. In fact, what is happening today is that utilities commit to a lot of dubious projects, many of which can never make it (e.g. due to lack of transmission) and/or will never make it. If there were real penalties, they’d take a much harder look at how to really deliver on the agreed-upon objectives.

3. A final key element to get right in the next generation of RPS is better transparency and project pipeline predictability. Only a predictable environment will be an investible one. One way of achieving good predictability are standard contracts which the utilities have to accept. The smoke-filled backroom dealing part of the RPS system has to be cleaned up.

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Municipal Solar Power Plants

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - April 11, 2008

At Nanosolar, we genuinely believe that meaningful scale for solar will come foremost from utility-scale solar power plants, particularly from municipal solar power plants of 2-10 megawatts (MW) in size. These power plants consist of rows of solar panels mounted onto the ground of free fields at the outskirts of towns and cities, feeding electricity directly into the municipal power grid.

A 2MW municipal solar power plant requires about 10 acres of land to serve a city of 1,000 homes — that’s acreage generally easily available at the outskirts of any city of such size in even the most developed countries. With a solar power plant in each of several hundred cities, a Gigawatt of power is delivered locally to where it is needed, in a digestible size.

In a municipal solar power plant, solar panels are mounted onto rails above the ground so that grass and flowers can continue to flourish in between and below the rows of panels. Care is taken that sufficient amounts of rainwater can drop through between adjoining panels so that the flowers and organisms below are not starved. In fact, in dry regions, the solar panels even benefit the ecosystem by increasing the moisture level in the soil.

Municipal solar power plants integrate very naturally into the existing landscape as well as the existing electricity grid. By feeding power directly into the (local, medium-voltage) distribution grid, they avoid the (long-haul, high-voltage) transmission grid which is expensive to build and expand, and also avoid the expense of a substation for down-transforming transmission voltage to municipal voltage. It’s a form of distributed generation, but at the wholesale level, and it has been determined (using CPUC methodolgy and data) that there is a locational benefit of about 35% over wholesale power cost. These are real dollars that providers of wholesale distributed power and rate payers can split in a win-win cost advantage.

In any region with a decent amount of sunshine, the most economic way of reliably providing municipal power during the day is through a municipal solar power plant. That’s because municipal solar power plants combine the locational benefit of avoided transmission with the time-of-day benefit of solar and the economics of scale.

Ground-mounted solar power plants are installed in industrially streamlined ways, with specialized tractors deploying standardized substructure components according to standard system block designs to achieve optimal cost efficiency.

While rooftops are also a good application for solar panels, it is a business that’s difficult to scale rapidly in a truly meaningful way. Crawling onto rooftops and mounting solar panels in compliance with building codes is a fundamentally less efficient proposition.

In fact, municipal solar power plants are one of the most rapidly deployable forms of power. While it takes 10-15 years to get a new coal plant done (if ever given the carbon risk) or 5 years for a concentrating solar-thermal plant (also requiring a connection to the transmission grid), a municipal solar plant can be completed in as little as 12 months.

Furthermore, a unique feature of photovoltaic power plants is that they utilize power inverter electronics with increasingly intelligent features. Enlightened utilities around the world are now identifying them as a very good way to manage and improve grid power quality. This is especially a point of pain at the outer branches of the electric grid where power quality is hard to manage otherwise. (Any U.S. utility executive who is concerned about the new world of local power but desires to learn more should join this trip.)

Municipal solar power plants offer an attractive level of efficiency, scale, and benefit in solar. This is not yet well known to the public in the United States and in California, where this segment has been stifled by the policy gap that exists in California between the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (geared towards >20 MW systems) and the California Solar Incentives (designed for <1 MW systems).

But towns and cities throughout Europe and Asia have already proven the concept, and many — increasingly entire counties — are now implementing plans to go to 100% renewable energy based on a mix of solar and biofuels. It works, it is economic, and it is possible now. It is a silent revolution going on that the press rarely reports about.

[A nice exception is an article today in our local newspaper -- "Local communities reach for power over energy" (SF Chronicle) -- describing how Marin County, California is wrestling with going for local renewable power. We salute their effort. It is well timed, smart, and shows a lot of foresight. They are on the right track based on what we see happening in our own industry and in energy overall. In a few years, they will have less expensive power than is available in the rest of PG&E territory.]

The amount of activity going on behind the scenes in readying technologies, sites, and financing for such endeavors is tremendous, and this will become very visible to the public in many locations in the United States in 2010. There is a reason why one of the world’s largest power producers invested in Nanosolar.

But now is the time for cities and counties to lay the adminstrative foundation for having their own power, 100% renewable, if they care to make a difference by then.

Update 4/30: Thank you for the hundreds of comments we have received to this posting via email. Our team has read and digested every single of them. To those of you who are disappointed that our first product is not for residential homeowners, we can reassure you that we do have a fabulous residential solution on our near-term roadmap — one that will bring the utility scale economics of Nanosolar Utility Panel technology to homes everywhere, and completely redefine how residential solar is done.

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Nanosolar Ships First Commercial Panels

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - December 18, 2007

After five years of product development — including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction — we now have shipped samples of our first product to customers.

We are grateful to everyone who supported us through all these years and the many occasions where there appeared to be mile-high concrete walls in our path; the unusual intensity and creativity of our team deserves all the credit for achieving this major milestone today.

As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned: Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit. Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today. Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.

Update 12/21:

eBay cancelled our auction — due to its charitable angle!  Our eBay auction started at 99 cents for the panel and quickly reached more than $13,000.00, with the highest bid submitted at $70,000 when eBay cancelled the auction because we had declared the proceeds would be used for charitable purpose.  We regret that eBay deleted our auction due to the promised charitable use of the proceeds.  Our Director of Legal spent much of the afternoon on the phone with eBay trying to reinstate the auction — but they have their rules.  Upon review we decided this isn’t a battle we care to fight more than an afternoon, so it’s back to building cells and panels for us. In other words, Panel #2 will stay at Nanosolar for now (no auction); thank you to everyone for participating in our auction; and most importantly: HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

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Named #1 Innovation of the Year 2007

By Nanosolar Communications - November 13, 2007

Popular Science magazine — which many of us read when we were little — just came out with its annual innovation awards.

Our solar electricity technology was named the top Innovation of the Year 2007.

Ranked #1 overall, we even came out ahead of the Apple iPhone and many other great technologies (and companies with much larger marketing budgets, in particular)!

It’s great to see our hard work — and greentech in general — recognized so enthusiastically. Now we have no choice but to make sure that there’s going to be a solar panel on every building in the future.

See also: Popular Science press release, website

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San Jose Factory Construction

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - October 28, 2007

The inside of our completed factory is not open to the public, due to all the proprietary things we have in there on every other square inch. However, here’s a photo from a bit earlier, which shows the first part of one of our roll-to-roll processing tools coming together. Many of our production tools are quite long — e.g. 100 feet. This maximizes the yield, throughput, and overall economics of the mile-long rolls of solar cell foil processed by the tool.

In addition to raw speed, a key advantage of roll-to-roll manufacturing is that after the first few feet of a roll is processed, it settles into a steady state which applies to the rest of the entire roll, resulting in very uniform deposition process parameters applied to essentially the entire substrate. This is much better than possible with processing of wafers or glass plates, where the fact that they have to be moved into and out of each process station introduces start-up and move-out process variabilities (and cycle time cost) to the substrate. Edge effects are also greatly minimized in roll processing (whereas processing glass plates or wafers requires much work and capital dealing with uniformity issues at the edges of the substrate).

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Nanosolar Awarded #1 Solar America Contract

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - September 23, 2007

I am honored to be able to confirm that Nanosolar has been selected — and completed negotiation — for a substantial funding award as part of the high-profile Solar America Initiative.

The competition was stiff and included every single significant solar company in this country, including SunPower, First Solar, General Electric, etc. So we are proud that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has decided to award us the largest net amount any company receives as part of the Solar America Initiative.

This award from the DoE comes at a timely junction of commercial acceleration for our company. It brings the DoE in alignment with the private investment community which has long recognized the distinctly superior potential of our technology.

We will do our best to deliver truly outstanding results for every dollar received, commensurate with our leading position of selection.

Related Articles: A New Day Dawns for Solar by Chris Nelder

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Nanosolar secures $100 million in funding

By Nanosolar Communications - June 21, 2006

Substantial Cleantech Equity Financing for Breakthrough Solar Cell Technology; Cementing Leadership Position Towards Delivering Grid-Parity Peak Power

PALO ALTO, California - June 21, 2006 - Nanosolar Inc., a global leader in solar power innovation, today announced that it now has $100 million in funding to take its breakthrough photovoltaic (PV) solar electricity technology into volume production.

The company announced it has completed a Series C Preferred Stock financing in the amount of more than $75 million, which, in conjunction with government factory subsidies recently secured, brings its total cash position (including non-debt cash equivalents) to just above $100 million.

"This will allow us to further expand our leadership position in solar power innovation," said Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar Inc. "We are looking forward to working with our new investors and partners, who have very successful track records in clean energy, to lead the industry on a path of rapidly more cost-efficient solar electricity."

In addition to strong participation by the company's existing investors including venture firms MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Firelake Capital, Onpoint as well as Japanese trading leader Mitsui, new investors include:
- SAC Capital and GLG Partners, two world-class investment funds with substantial PV industry investment experience;
- Swiss Re, the insurance sector leader of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index;
- Grazia Equity, the original backer of Conergy AG, the world's largest PV system integrator;
- Christian Reitberger, the original backer of Q-Cells, the world's largest independent silicon cell PV manufacturer;
- Capricorn Management, the investment arm of Jeff Skoll, known for its support of clean energy causes;
- the investment arms of SAP founders Klaus Tschira (via FirstVentury) and Dietmar Hopp, and
- Beck, a leading PV power plant system integrator.

"Nanosolar is the one company we believe has really put together all the pieces necessary to produce a distinct leap forward in the cost efficiency and production scalability of PV cells and panels; we're enthusiastically looking forward to be working with the team," said Alec Rauschenbusch, a Managing Director of Grazia Equity and a board member of Conergy AG.

"As the world's leading and most diversified reinsurer, Swiss Re is strongly committed to sustainability and strives to leverage its expertise in this area in both risk management and investments," commented Hans Mehn, head of Direct Investments at Swiss Re. "We are attracted to the economics and scalability of Nanosolar's solar power technology as well as the fit of this investment into Swiss Re's Sustainability Portfolio."

"Coal-fired power plants are one of the biggest drivers of global warming," added Jeff Skoll. "As we shift towards a future where the risks of global warming are recognized as both unsustainable and immoral, a company like Nanosolar can help us keep power affordable."

Added Erik Straser, General Partner, MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures: "This financing is not only a testament to the differentiation of Nanosolar's technology but also a reflection on the entire team and execution capability of the company."

"We are pleased to have been able to achieve such a broad consensus among the leading investors in this industry that we have managed to develop the world's distinctly most cost-efficient, mass-manufacturable solar cell," said Martin Roscheisen. "We are excited about working with our extended team to build a company that contributes to ensuring a safe future where there will be affordable electricity without the risk from carbon emissions."

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Nanosolar closes Series B financing, bringing total amount ouf funding secured to $48 million

By Nanosolar Communications - June 13, 2005

Mohr Davidow Ventures Leads Series B Round in Developer of World's Most Cost-Efficient Solar Electricity Technology

PALO ALTO, California - June 13th, 2005 - Nanosolar, Inc., the technology leader in delivering the world's most cost-efficient solar electricity, today announced that it closed $20 million in Series B funding last month. This increases the total amount of funding secured by the company to $37 million (not including additional loans). Led by MDV (Mohr Davidow Ventures), the Series B round also includes Mitsui, Japan's largest distribution company, and Onpoint, the U.S. Army's venture fund, in addition to previous investors which included Benchmark Capital and others. The funding will support the company's move into commercial production. As part of the financing, MDV's Erik Straser has joined the company's board of directors.

"We are delighted to receive financing from MDV, Mitsui, and Onpoint," said Martin Roscheisen, chief executive of Nanosolar, Inc. "Erik Straser and MDV have been our very top choice among the large set of interested venture investors; their understanding of the market and technology opportunity is unmatched. We are also excited to be working with Mitsui and Onpoint; their expertise and reach is unrivaled in market segments very important to us."

"Among all the companies working on next-generation solar technology, Nanosolar is the one that can deliver the very best cost efficiency, and it accomplishes this without having to compromise on energy conversion efficiency or durability," said MDV's Erik Straser. "We are excited to be working with Nanosolar."

Nanosolar has successfully developed a leapfrog aggregate of process technology innovations for solar panels that can match conventional silicon modules in both energy output and long-term durability yet deliver radically lower fully-loaded manufacturing product cost. A key aspect to this is the unprecedented throughput that Nanosolar's process technology achieves: With more than an order of magnitude faster intrinsic process throughput over the best in conventional silicon or vacuum technology, Nanosolar can produce solar panels in a highly cost and capital efficient way.

"Because of its unique technological approach, Nanosolar will bring products to the market that will have a profound impact on the world. This is an amazingly exciting company and opportunity," added Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital.

About MDV - Mohr Davidow Ventures

Since its formation in 1983, Mohr Davidow Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, has earned a reputation among entrepreneurs as a skillful partner committed to building industry-leading companies in the areas of energy and materials, networking, software and Internet services, semiconductor and life sciences. For more information, please visit www.mdv.com.

About Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital is a leading venture capital firm with the mission of helping talented entrepreneurs build major technology enterprises focused on long-term growth. Benchmark's portfolio includes franchise companies such as Ariba, Broadbase Software, CacheFlow, Critical Path, eBay, Juniper Networks, Kana Communications, Northpoint Communications, and Red Hat Software.

About OnPoint Technologies

OnPoint Technologies, a strategic private equity firm funded by the US Army, has a mission to discover, invest in and support companies developing innovative mobile power and energy technology at the intersection of the defense and commercial markets. For more information on OnPoint, please visit www.onpoint.us.

About Mitsui & Co., Ltd.

Mitsui & Co., Ltd., is Japan's oldest and largest international trading company with over 300 years of business presence in the world and more than $100 billion in annual business. The company is taking up a leading role in Japan's fast development of information technology, communications systems, and electronics business. With offices around the world and nearly 100 consolidated subsidiaries and joint ventures across the United States, the company is attuned to cultivate strategic business and project development, now and tomorrow.

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