SolarEdge garners $23 million in funding
Israeli start-up Solar Edge has secured $23 million in funding to further develop its technology for increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic panels.
GE Energy Financial Services was a principle contributor to this latest round of funding and made the announcement Wednesday.
In May, SolarEdge unveiled a boosting technology for photovoltaic panels that it said could increase a solar power system's output by as much as 25 percent.
The SolarEdge system is a junction box with an integrated circuit that is embedded into existing solar photovoltaic panels to minimize the amount of electricity loss, thereby maximizing the amount of power the total system can generate. The box is designed to be used on either large-scale or residential solar panel systems.
Alex Urquhart, president and CEO of GE Energy Financial Services, said in a statement that he viewed the venture as opening the door to a more involved collaboration with joint product development and distribution between GE and SolarEdge.
Other investors that joined in the latest round of funding include Opus Capital, Walden International, Genesis Partners, Vertex Venture Capital, and JP Capital Asia.
It's the first time that GE Energy Financial Services has made an investment in an Israel-based company, GE said in a statement.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
