Ascent Solar buys new plant and HQ

Solar thin film module maker Ascent Solar Technologies (NASDAQ: ASTI) has bought a new manufacturing facility that will also serve as its corporate headquarters.

Located in Thornton, Colorado, just north of downtown Denver, the 120,000 square feet plant is to provide manufacturing space for the first of several 25MW solar module production lines.

The company plans to expand its worldwide production capacity to 100MW by 2011.

The first 25MW production line is planned for completion by year-end 2009, and is expected to create 300 jobs.

Support of the Colorado Governor’s offices for Economic Development and Energy helped the company to purchase the facility at "competitive terms," it said.

Shares of Ascent were up almost 8 percent today, buoyed, in part—along with others in the solar industry—by positive coverage of SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) in Barron's.

The company has been selected by the U.S. Air Force to develop a flexible thin film tandem solar cell to demonstrate high thin film photovoltaic efficiencies (see Ascent to develop 20% efficiency thin film cells.)

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• Indian companies order 300MW in wind power
• Beijing meets "blue sky days" target early
• Finland, Vietnam launch fish fuel project

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed