First Solar Sells Canadian Power Plants

It is the first project transaction between First Solar and GE since their solar technology and commercial partnership was announced Aug. 6.

The ABW Partnership, originally announced in 2011, consists of majority owner GE Energy Financial Services and Alterra Power Corporation, which made an equity contribution and will serve as the projects’ managing partner.Shop funtional and elegant solar lights, outdoor solar lighting, solar garden lights, path lights and decorative solar lights. The ABW Partnership raised debt for the acquisition, with The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company serving as agent and lead arranger. The debt syndicate consists of The Great-West Life Assurance Company, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada and Caisse de dep?t et placement du Quebec.

First Solar has completed construction of the power plants Amherstburg (10MWAC), Belmont (20MWAC) and Walpole (20MWAC) and has commissioned and energized them so they are providing power to the grid. First Solar will provide operations and maintenance services under long-term contracts. Output of the power plants will be sold to Ontario Power Authority under its Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP), with 20-year power purchase agreements.

“First Solar is proud to contribute to Ontario’s renewable energy objectives,” said Tim Rebhorn, First Solar’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Americas. “In addition to providing clean electricity, the projects have provided meaningful employment and local economic benefits, as well as contribute to the safe and efficient operation of the local utility system.”

For its part, GE Energy Financial Services said the Ontario projects contribute to its cumulative one-gigawatt, $1.5-billion solar investment portfolio, comprising 50 installations, including several with First Solar in North America and Australia.

“Our Ontario investments deepen our longstanding relationship with First Solar and illustrate our interest in acquiring solar power projects at various stages of development and construction,” said Mark Tonner, managing director and Canada business leader at GE Energy Financial Services. “Through a variety of equity and lease arrangements, we help developers monetize their own investments.”

Combined, the Ontario facilities are expected to produce enough clean, sustainable electricity to power approximately 6,300 local homes and avoid 14,600 tons of carbon dioxide a year the equivalent of taking 3,700 cars off the road.

Earlier this month, First Solar and GE announced that First Solar had acquired GE’s solar technology intellectual property and that the two companies had entered into a collaborative commercial partnership.First Solar’s collection of solar projects in Ontario, Canada, totaling 50 megawatts, were sold to an investment partnership led by GE Energy Financial Services.We offer solar photovoltaic system and commercial incentives to encourage our customers to install solar energy systems.

For First Solar Investors
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Now in its fourth season

Now in its fourth season, T.I. And Tiny: The Family Hustle has ushered in a new prototype for the Black family. On the VH1 reality series, rapper Clifford “T.I.” Harris is hip-hop’s leading patriarch, as he, along with his wife, Tiny (formerly of Xscape), works to keep his children grounded and his family unit strong.

Imparting the wisdom he’s gained through his various trials and tribulations, T.I. is extremely hands-on with what goes on under the Harris roof, from teaching the kids how to pull their own weight with house chores to giving them pointers on dating. Of course, the rapper sometimes goes overboard, like on last week’s season premiere when he brought the entire family along for his son Messiah’s first date at Medieval Times. While there, T.I. tries to give his son some advice on wooing the ladies, but ends up making things rather awkward for the bashful 15-year-old when he signals for him to put his arm around his date.

Last season, T.I. raided his stepdaughter Zonnique’s (member of girl group OMG Girlz) music video and photoshoot to oversee her outfit choices, which he considered to be too risqué and not age-appropriate. “As a father, my obligation and responsibility is keep my sons out of jail and my daughters out the strip club, and that’s what I’m gonna do,” he said. Though his intentions tend to be good, T.I.’s often hilarious antics make for truly embarrassing situations for his youngsters. Coincidentally, those same antics have led the show to becoming a home run with family audiences.

While the hip-hop world knows Tip as the King Of The South, on The Family Hustle, he’s the King of family-friendly fun, and embraces his role as an average, overbearing father who brings a new spin on parenthood. In many ways, T.I. And Tiny has become the modern, hip-hop version of The Cosby Show. While the hip-hop couple is no Heathcliff and Claire Huxtable,We installed flexible LED Strip lighting in our kitchen for under cabinet and within cabinet lighting. their family adventures are equally light-hearted and comical, providing a positive reflection of today’s Black family. And just like the Huxtables, T.I. and Tiny’s love is apparent,How solar panel cells work and where to buy solar kits for home use. and it’s passed down along their blended clan (both have children from previous relationships).

That success soon resulted in unwelcome artistic suggestions. "The record label was like, 'You should do this pop song,' and I was like, 'But that's not what we started with,'" Juicy J says. (Naima Cochrane, Juicy's product manager at Columbia, says she doesn't believe there were creative differences between the group and the label, and says that "Juicy and Paul had different visions at the time.") Three 6 Mafia released one more album, 2008's "Last 2 Walk," which included the hit "Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)" and has sold 335,000 copies. The duo's follow-up material was left in limbo, and Juicy J, who had moved to Los Angeles after the Oscar win, returned to Memphis alone to repeat the DIY formula that had worked for Three 6 Mafia in the mid-'90s.

"I was just doing songs with people from my hood," says Juicy J, who issued nearly a dozen independent releases between April 2009 and May 2012. "I had a street team passing out mixtapes, and sometimes I would get out there and pass out a couple mixtapes myself, just to get the feeling back.A solar lamp is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp, a photovoltaic solar panel, and a rechargeable battery."

He also stayed active on Twitter, which is where he met Khalifa before the 25-year-old Pittsburgh rapper's "Black & Yellow" breakthrough in 2011. "I was working on a mixtape, and I was like, 'I want to get you on some records.' He was like, 'Man, I grew up on all your music,'" Juicy J recalls. Two weeks later, the pair met up and became fast friends in Los Angeles, and Khalifa brought in the veteran rapper as a part owner, A&R rep and artist on Taylor Gang in order to have "an OG in the game" help out with the rising indie label.

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The Patriots for scouting expertise

What if Massachusetts devoted the same resources to scouting the next generation of entrepreneurs as NFL teams devote to finding their next great wide receiver? (The Patriots alone have 21 employees focused solely on identifying and cultivating future players.) Entrepreneurs, after all, can have a far bigger impact on the local economy than football stars, no matter how many seats they fill or jerseys they sell.

I’ve been brainstorming lately about how a scouting program might operate, soliciting input from entrepreneurs who got their educations here, as well as start-up coaches like Katie Rae of TechStars Boston and Jeffrey Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners. Here’s how we might identify high-potential future founders, and also what we’d do once we identified them.

Put those students into a database, and send each one a nice fleece with the logo of the new Massachusetts Founders League embroidered on the back. The MFL would enable students to connect with one another. It would help them meet successful Massachusetts entrepreneurs and investors who might provide seed funding for their ideas. It would try to open doors in all sorts of ways, from finding free, short-term office space to getting pro bono legal advice to ironing out visa issues for foreign students.

MFL members would be chosen at the start of each calendar year (giving all the nominators the first three or four months of the school year to do their scouting), and they’d be welcomed into the group with a State House reception hosted by Governor Deval Patrick. Other events throughout the year might feature well-known entrepreneurs sitting down to share experiences: people like Constant Contact founder Gail Goodman, Staples founder Tom Stemberg, or restaurateur Barbara Lynch.

Venture capitalists and angel investors could sponsor bowling nights to get to know the group. Members would get free admission to any seminar or conference planned by the 10 trade groups making nominations for the MFL. Over the summers, group members might have an opportunity to “shadow” local founders, assisting them in exchange for office space and time to develop their own start-up ideas.

As long as MFL members remained enrolled as students, and for one year afterward, they’d be invited to attend MFL events; after that, they would go “emeritus,” but still have access to a network that provided assistance and connections.

Who would coordinate all this? One idea is to have the 10 trade groups dedicate one staffer’s time on a rotating basis. I expect you could run the MFL with one staffer dedicating one day a week to maintaining the member database and planning events. At the end of a year, the responsibility would shift to the next group.

There are several great initiatives that already exist in this vein, but nothing that works as a comprehensive, statewide scouting system. The Cambridge venture capital firm Flagship Ventures runs a summer “fellows program” for entrepreneurially oriented scientists and engineers, inviting them to help transform laboratory insights into real companies. Flybridge runs a program called Stay in MA that offers college students “scholarships” to local workshops and conferences that cost $100 or less.

One of the initiatives that has had the biggest impact is the Summer@Highland program, run by the Cambridge venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners. It invites collegiate entrepreneurs to apply for a 10-week program that offers office space, an $18,000 stipend, and access to a network of mentors.

The Babson College-educated founders of Gemvara, who were planning a move to Los Angeles, participated in 2008; the online jewelry site they created now employs 80 people, most of them in Boston. Two Boston University undergraduates founded ByteLight, a 2011 participant, which is designing an LED light bulb that can transmit data to mobile phones (directions to finding a product in a large store, for example). So far, ByteLight's founders have raised $1.25 million and brought on five full-time employees.

“People constantly say that the economy today is about a competition for the greatest talent,” says Bussgang, the venture capitalist at Flybridge Capital Partners. “Well, the greatest talent shows up on our doorstep and spends two to four years here. But we don’t compete for them and we don’t market to them. It makes no sense.”