Miasole, pronounced mia-sol-AY, one of the leading thin film solar plays that have investors so jazzed, has raised another $35M in venture capital.

Details are thin [ed.: har!], but this means the company has raised at least $58 million in total, now, from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Firelake Strategic Technology Fund, Garage Technology Ventures and Nippon Kouatsu Electric Co.

Miasole is one of several companies hustling to bring technology to market based on CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenium), sometimes called CIS, and thin film polymers. Photovoltaic (PV) compounds is "painted" on materials that can be more flexible than traditional silicon, allowing the material to be used in applications where rigid cells aren't appropriate. The PV capability may or may not even involve silicon whatsoever, depending on the approach.

CIGS solar cells aren't as efficient at harvesting sunlight as silicon solar cells, but that's not the point - advocates are hoping they'll be much cheaper, and hopefully faster, to make. CIGS solar cells are mostly only made now in small batches for prototyping.

Miasole, Nanosolar (message board), HelioVolt (message board), Konarka (message board) and DayStar Technologies (message board) are all in a race to get to wide deployments.

Miasole and DayStar, which plans to begin volume manufacturing in the first part of 2007, will be two of the first to move toward mass production. Miasole has gone on the record saying it anticipates a public offering in 12 to 18 months.

Nanosolar announced in June that it would build the world’s largest solar cell factory in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company has raised $100M, and investors include the co-founders of Google. If the company succeeds with its plans, it will produce in the vicinity of 430 megawatts worth of PV material per year - making it one of the world's largest solar material producers.

Sound like a lot? Earlier this year Miasole VP marketing Martin Wenzel claimed that within five years his company could be producing between 1.0 and 1.5 gigawatts of photovoltaics per year. The entire world production of photovoltaics in 2005 was 1.6 gigawatts. With supplies of silicon constrained, it's not surprising that investors are interested in these companies.

HelioVolt, an Austin, Tex. company, is still reportedly trying to raise $50 million after already securing funding from New Enterprise Associates.