ALBUQUERQUE — Advent Solar, which laid off nearly half its work force last spring, announced 55 more layoffs Friday, saying the current tight credit market made it impossible for it to raise the money it needed to move from development to manufacturing.

Chief executive officer Peter Green said that means the company's current generation of solar cells and modules will be produced by other manufacturers.

Advent Solar said it will begin licensing its technology.

"We have started preliminary discussions with people, but they're very preliminary," Richard Trueblood, the company's chief financial officer, said Friday.

Last September the firm went to capital markets to raise money to acquire solar cell and module manufacturing equipment. But it said the current credit crisis has made that impossible right now, "especially for business plans with capital-intensive strategies."

The layoffs and the new strategy for getting its products to market were "solely because of the credit market," Trueblood said.

Advent Solar said it would focus research and development efforts on the next generation of solar technologies, and could review its options for manufacturing those once capital becomes available again.

The company now has 39 employees, most of them in "very highly technical" research and development positions, Trueblood said.

It said it will provide eight weeks of salary and health care for the laid-off employees.

Trueblood said it's too early to know whether the company could rehire workers in the future. "We'd certainly like to get to a point where we could," he said.

In March 2008, Advent Solar laid off 68 manufacturing employees, leaving about 78 workers then. It said those cuts were necessary to allow time for research into a larger solar cell the company expected to begin making this year.

The company, which began operations in 2003, laid off 27 people in September 2007.

Advent Solar designs silicon-based photovoltaic cells and modules under the trademark Ventura Technology. According to the company's Web site, its technology provides a blueprint for high-performance solar modules that will shift solar energy from an alternative source to the mainstream.