US solar module developer Ascent Solar appoints Dr Farhad Moghadam CEO

14 July 2009

Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc., a developer of state of the art flexible thin-film solar modules, has appointed Dr Farhad Moghadam as the company’s president and CEO.

Dr Moghadam most recently served as senior vice president and general manager at Applied Materials, where, among other things, he led the Thin Films Product Group, Applied’s largest business unit, and was responsible for managing over 1,100 Applied employees in the US, Europe and Asia.

He also served on the board of directors of Sokudo, Ltd. Before joining Applied, Dr Moghadam held management positions at Intel Corporation. Since 2007, he has been engaged with prominent private equity firms, and he recently assisted companies seeking to participate in the US Department of Energy loan guarantee programme with independent engineering assessments and bankability evaluations.

Ascent Solar founder and chairman Dr Mohan Misra said, ‘Ascent Solar is moving rapidly on many business fronts, and we expect that the addition of Dr Moghadam to lead our company will help us meet the challenges associated with the rapid growth we see ahead. After an extensive search lasting nine months, we are delighted that Dr Moghadam has chosen to become Ascent Solar’s new president and CEO. Dr Moghadam possesses an impressive track record at Applied and Intel in shaping and building the businesses of those leading companies. We are confident that Ascent Solar will benefit significantly from Dr Moghadam’s outstanding, broad based qualifications and experience.’

‘Ascent Solar is among a very few PV companies which has proven technology ready for high volume manufacturing of CIGS PV material on a plastic substrate,’ added Dr Moghadam. ‘There are two key constraints in solar industry today – efficiency and cost. I believe that Ascent Solar, through extensive process development and characterisation, has a unique product ready for scale-up. I am excited about joining the company and to be part of the team to grow and establish Ascent Solar as a leader in the market for lightweight, flexible PV modules.’

Ascent Solar recently achieved its initial target module efficiency goal of ten per cent for its flexible Copper, Indium, Gallium, Selenide (CIGS) monolithically integrated modules.

Copyright © 2009 NewNet

Tags: solar

This story was published on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under North America, companies, solar. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply