Intel's commercial interest in solar enery is increasing and after a big investment in June, the semiconductor company's venture capital unit is now investing in a German solar module company.

Intel Capital is reported to be lining up a €24m ($37.7m) investment in Berlin-based Sulfurcell, which produces modules for the photovoltaic generation of energy. It has a pilot production line for solar modules using Copper-Indium-Sulfide (CIS) as an absorber material.

The German company is currently planning a new production facility with capacity of 75MW per year.

According to Sulfurcell, it uses ordinary window glass as a basis for their electricity-generating solar modules and so the key element is the thin CIS-layer. This layer absorbs as much sunlight as the silicon wafers of conventional solar modules, though the latter are one hundred times thicker.

Market research company, iSuppli is predicting that worldwide investments in the production of photovoltaic (PV) cells will rise to the same level as those for semiconductor manufacturing by 2010.

The company expects global production of PV cells to rise to as much as 12 Gigawatts (GW) by 2010, up from 3.5GW in 2007.

In June, Intel created a solar energy business, SpectraWatt. As part of this, Intel Capital led a $50m investment round in SpectraWatt and was joined by Cogentrix Energy LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Goldman Sachs Group, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund and Solon AG.

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