Cambridge based CleanTech company, Eight19, has won the Climate Week award for ‘Best Innovation by an SME business’.

The solar power innovator is also in the running for multiple honours at Business Weekly’s Awards presentation dinner next week.

Eight19 is accelerating its product development and commercial roll-out globally with a Series B £5m funding round.

The funding will be used for the further development of the company’s low cost printed plastic solar film and for accelerating the deployment of Eight19’s IndiGo pay-as-you-go solar power products, which are already attracting strong customer demand in emerging markets.

Eight19 received £4.5m of funding in September 2010 from the Carbon Trust and Rhodia SA and it is expected that the new round this summer will be taken up by a combination of existing and new investors.

Eight19, recently began deploying its IndiGo pay-as-you-go personal solar electricity system for off-grid communities in the world’s youngest country – South Sudan.

Having launched the solar scratch cards in Kenya last September, the company has now started global roll-out in a nation that has just wrested independence from the horrors of civil war.

Eight19 has partnered with WorldVenture, an international charitable organisation, to deploy the systems in rural villages in the region of Nimule in South Sudan.

Eight19 envisages that it will deploy 1000 units in the first half of 2012 to the region. South Sudan is the fourth African country in which Eight19 has deployed IndiGo since the Kenya launch.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Eight19 CEO, Simon Bransfield-Garth