By Tom Cheyney
Until recently, Solyndra had been one of the stealthiest thin-film photovoltaics operators, its glistening, prominently logoed headquarters building reminding tech-savvy commuters plowing up and down the I.880 corridor near Fremont, CA, of how little they knew about the company. But Solyndra has finally let the sunshine in and come out of the closet — even if it hasn't quite changed some of its stealthy ways. After a well-planned media and analyst rollout, the public knows that for this copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film PV manufacturer, the world — or at least its solar-module form factor — is not flat. Like many TFPV purveyors, Solyndra loves glass as a substrate, but the company's meter-long CIGS-coated cylindrical modules look like a fluorescent light-bulb tube, not just another rectangular slab of the smooth stuff.
