Palo Alto, CA-based Nanosolar, which is co-financed by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, has announced it has started shipping its flexible thin-film solar cells. The cells are not manufactured from silicon, but rather from copper indium gallium selenide, which is cheaper.

"We have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany," said Chief Executive Martin Roscheisen in a statement on Nanosolar's Web site. "The first megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there."

They have a partnership with Beck Energy of Germany to build a solar farm on the site of a former landfill owned by a wastewater treatment plant in Luckenwalde, Germany. The solar farm is to generate about 1 megawatt of electricity.

"It's fairly new in the industry for the company to basically go from zero to a megawatt," said Martin Roscheisen.

Nanosolar is building a large production facility in San Jose and another one in Berlin, Germany, with an annual capacity of 430 Megawatts. The production capacity is enough to roughly triple total American solar cell production, moving the US from third worldwide to second, behind Japan.

Nanosolar uses Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide in their cells, which can achieve up to 19.5% efficiency. To build their thin film solar cells, they use a special semiconductor ink which is "printed" on a flexible substrate. Subsequently, nanocomponents in the ink allegedly align themselves properly via molecular self-assembly. The exact manufacturing process is a closely preserved secret.

Roscheisen said the first panel that came off the rolls will become part of a special Nanosolar exhibit. The second panel produced will be auctioned off on eBay, while the third will be donated to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.

Nanosolar's technique allows it to sell panels for less than $1 per watt, allowing manufacturers to build devices which produce electricity at around $2 per watt. This is five to ten times cheaper than other, silicon-based, solutions.