Volume manufacturing of its devices by Celestica

In addition to expanding its manufacturing, the company plans to add to its sales support operations and to build its research and development teams for future products.

The company has posted openings for product managers and an information technology manager and engineers.

SolarBridge, which has raised $46 million to date, is a leading maker of advanced and efficient microinverters that improve the reliability of rooftop solar power systems, increase energy production and save costs by simplifying installation.

The company, which is expanding rapidly in Austin, expects to employ 75 people worldwide by the end of this year. It has announced partnerships with two major makers of solar panels, Kyocera Solar Inc. and SunPower Corp., and it expects to announce more partners soon. The first panels with its inverters installed should be available for sale this summer.

Volume manufacturing of its devices by Celestica, an international contract manufacturer, started in April at its factory in Dongguan, China.

CEO Ron Van Dell said SolarBridge operates in a segment of the solar power market that accounts for about $3 billion a year in global sales. Much of the industry's focus so far has been on how to make solar panels more cheaply and efficiently. But now, Van Dell said, industry attention is shifting to power inverters, which can be another area for improving savings and reliability.

The company, which licenses technical discoveries made at the University of Illinois, uses advanced power electronics to create an inverter that it says will work for 25 years or longer and "harvest" more than 95 percent of the energy produced by solar panels.