Photo of P4 prototype material in development. P4 is not currently available on the market.
THE problem
Climate change is the greatest challenge faced by humanity. If we assume no fundamental improvement in renewable energy technologies, fossil fuels can be projected to remain 85% of global primary energy consumed through 2040 (Source).
Solar energy is the most abundant potential source of clean energy, and could supply more than 1,400 times more energy than all humans consume. Current market technologies for clean energy are still too expensive for most consumers in the US and around the world.
Global emissions growth will be largely determined by the energy choices of the most populous, least affluent, and fastest developing nations. To move beyond fossil fuels, new clean energy technologies are required that can be scaled globally and installed at driven development path at a low-cost (Source).
Since 1990, high-level international conferences on climate and renewable energy have become frequent. During the past 30 years, the actual consumption of fossil fuels has grown by more than 40%. With current market technologies, solar PV, the most abundant source of potential clean energy, still represents less than 1% of global energy consumed. PI Energy's goal is to bring solar PV to the whole world’s population— and fast.
About 90% of installed solar PV modules are traditional crystalline-silicon (c-Si). This type of solar panel is relatively heavy and rigid, which makes it expensive to install and significantly limits where it can be placed. Traditional c-Si requires rack mounting hardware, so it is mostly placed on roofs that can carry the additional weight, and solar farm projects where it is ground-mounted into concrete foundations.
About 10% of the remaining solar PV installed globally is made with CdTeC (Cadmium Telluride) and CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenide), which are somewhat flexible, but contain toxic and scarce elements, which limit where they can be installed. Clean energy should not include the widespread adoption of toxic elements, and it cannot be broadly adopted if scarce elements are used.
According to MIT, current market solutions for PV are not globally scalable. For solar energy to be a meaningful part of global energy, it must be practical to install on most surfaces, at a low installed cost, and be made of earth-abundant, non-toxic elements. This is the technology that PI Energy is developing.
the solution
PI Energy’s solar PV technology design is different from any in the market today. The key difference is the sum of properties: ultra-thin, flexible, non-toxic, durable, good performance, made from earth-abundant elements, lightweight, and low-installed cost. These advantages enable a vast amount of new applications, from wrap-around PV for electric and hybrid vehicles (cars, buses, vans, trucks, trains, and ships), electronic equipment and devices, and most surfaces of buildings, walls, infrastructure, including most fixed structures.
There are lots of surfaces that could have solar PV with the right technology. Many commercial and industrial roofs are made of thin sheet metal and cannot support the additional heavy weight of traditional c-Si solar PV without expensive reinforcement. Large data centers, like the massive buildings housing Amazon Web Services and Google cloud storage, represent a new market segment addressable by PI Energy. Our technology moves solar PV power generation closer to the location of power consumption, thus reducing expensive transmission and grid infrastructure costs, while using surfaces on existing structures.
Other current market solar PV technologies that are not as heavy as c-Si, such as CdTe, CIGS, and Perovskites, contain toxic elements (e.g., cadmium and/or lead), which pose a challenge for applications in proximity to humans (Source).
We believe the unique combination of properties of PI Energy’s technology meets all the necessary characteristics required for a solar PV technology that can be globally scaled, so that it can supply a large portion of the global energy market by allowing installation on far more surfaces at a competitive cost.
Generating more clean power locally, where the power is consumed, instead of large remote solar farms away from population centers, provides benefits of reducing electrical grid congestion and infrastructure costs. Much of the electric power costs for consumers come from power line transmission and other grid infrastructure costs. With PI Energy’s distributed clean energy generation approach, significant additional cost savings, in reduced grid costs, are an added benefit to making clean energy more competitive and scalable.
the market
Currently, the total grid-connected energy market is about $2.6 trillion per year globally, and the available solar PV module market is only about $46.6 billion in module sales annually in 2020 *.
We believe our estimated serviceable obtainable market is at least about 25% of the current photovoltaic module/panel market, or about $11.7 billion. We see a unique untapped opportunity, addressable by PI Energy, for vehicle-integrated PV in the growing untapped electric vehicle market.
* Sources for data
In 2018, there were 5,000,000 electric cars worldwide with a growth of 68% over the previous year. The same year there were 460,000 electric buses, with a 25% annual growth (Source). This represents an $8.3 billion/year untapped serviceable solar market for new vehicles.
In 2020, California passed a mandate that all new vehicles sold starting in 2035 must be EVs, followed by other US states and a growing number of countries. Several automobile manufacturers have announced plans to go completely electric by 2030 (Volvo, and in Europe, Ford) or 2035 (General Motors).
This is an unaddressed market for solar PV integration, as there is no scalable market-available solar PV technology that can be practically applied to electric vehicles safely or at a reasonable cost. PI Energy intends to provide its PV material technology for wrapping onto electric vehicles, where it would serve as a range extender, for example, providing passenger vehicles and delivery vans approximately 20 miles (32 km) of additional range on a daily basis in a region with good solar resources like southern California.
*This statistic is sourced from the International Energy Agency - GW modules installed globally multiplied by the average module price figures (Section Sources Source 1 and Source 2)
our traction
Transformational hardware innovation, including energy generation equipment, often takes many years to develop. This type of innovation is also known as “Tough Tech” or “Hard Tech” when a technology solution is based on hardware, has transformational power, and often takes years of technology development. Historically, new solar cell development has taken about a decade of dedicated work. PI Energy has dedicated the time, focus, and expertise to develop a fundamental innovation for solar PV over the past decade. With advanced technology, PI Energy intends to grow the solar energy market far beyond present growth trends.
According to MIT, for a solar PV cell technology to provide a globally scalable market-driven solar energy solution, all the key advantages (green) are required, while avoiding disadvantages (red):
(Source)
To fund its technology development, PI Energy has raised over $16M during the last 10 years of technology development, mostly from private investors, including family offices with direct experience in renewable energy and electric vehicle markets.
Shown below are a few images, out of over 2,000 fabricated prototype samples, over the course of a decade of PI Energy’s technology development:
The first two pictures are P1 prototypes under an electrical test probe. The next couple are iterations of P2. The circular devices with grids are tests of P3. The last picture is an early picture of testing material processing techniques for the latest generation, P4. These are all prototypes not yet available on the market.
Our team of experts is driven to meet this commercial and sustainability goal. We have built hundreds of prototypes of our nanofilm PV technology, arriving at the current design, which we intend to commercialize. PI Energy’s team is currently advancing our most recent P4 prototype, and integrating various manufacturing techniques, to complete a fully integrated PV material that we can then commercialize. As a part of our development process, a full patent was filed for our current generation PV material design in December 2020.
*This video discusses our prototype products which are currently in development and pre-production.
making solar pv practical
PI Energy is continuing to refine and develop its unique and flexible solar module, so that it can be fabricated on a roll-to-roll manufacturing process, using demonstrated high-volume manufacturing processes. We expect our product will be about 40 times thinner than traditional c-Si solar PV, and made of earth-abundant and made from non-toxic, earth abundant, elements.
Development Stage
The technology is currently still under development. We are in the process of building prototypes to demonstrate the technology and the manufacturing process. We have built multiple initial prototypes that are developing various steps of this process. The full integration of all steps comes after each sum of steps has been demonstrated and optimized. These are small area prototypes, which after demonstrating at thin-film commercial efficiencies, we will move to larger-scale pilot demonstration along with pilot manufacturing.
Solving a Critical Problem for Clean Energy
The low surface power density of renewables is one of the biggest challenges confronting a transition to clean energy. Power density represents how much power can be generated from the area occupied by an energy source (e.g., fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, etc.). Power density (watts per unit area) includes all the area that is committed to generating energy. For biomass, this area includes the fields of cultivated crops where the material is grown. For fossil fuels, this area includes the extraction and processing facilities as well as the power plant. Nuclear power has attractively high power density, but its costs have not been competitive with fossil fuels and there is substantial controversy on safety as well as the challenges of nuclear materials proliferation. Natural gas has the highest power density of fossil fuels, but that is offset by its “super-potent” greenhouse effect (about 120x worse in the short term than CO2) from gas leaks during extraction and transport. The chart shows the range of power densities for different energy sources.
Solar PV has the highest power density of renewables, but it is still less than 1/10 to 1/100 that of fossil fuel-generated power. According to Professor Vaclav Smil (Source), a leading energy transition expert, using existing market solar technologies, traditional PV projects would require covering millions of acres of valuable land worldwide to make renewable energy significant which is impractical and unfeasible.
A natural landscape cluttered with vast expanses of rows of solar PV panels is not the future we want to see. Also, precious farmland should not be replaced with utility-scale PV projects. Some of today’s renewable energy projects require 1,000 times more land than fossil fuel power plants to generate the same average power. We think the best approach is to use existing surfaces that are closer to where the energy is being used, therefore a new approach to solar PV is necessary. These surfaces include existing buildings and vehicles.
A solar technology that can lead a transition to clean energy must be:
This is what we are developing at PI Energy.
COMMERCIALIZATION
PI Energy has identified several market entry approaches into the global energy market. Focus is important with so many addressable energy market segments and numerous consumer applications for PI Energy’s technology. Here are three-pronged parallel paths we plan to follow for commercialization:
How are we different
PI Energy’s solar cell technology provides unique market advantages over traditional solar PV.
PI Energy’s technology is only about 1/40th the thickness of traditional c-Si. This allows it to operate at higher ambient temperatures with less efficiency loss
the vision
We want to help bring about a future that is clean and globally sustainable.
We envision PV on most external surfaces for residential, commercial, and industrial markets, and wrapping electric cars & buses, mobile devices, and more. Over the next decade, we intend to reshape the path of renewable energy globally and bring clean energy within the reach of almost every region and market.
Collaboration with Energy Storage Innovators
Over the long term, we also plan to partner with energy storage solutions that align with our approach and plans: technologies that are globally scalable (using earth-abundant and non-toxic elements) and cost-disruptive (that can provide good performance and be deployed at a low cost). Collaborating with such enterprises, we can be more effective and competitive. We plan to partner with these companies in pilot projects and further collaborative commercialization.
Multiple Markets
PI Energy plans to expand its solar energy product across multiple markets. We plan to sell into our own high-end production capability that will service the high-margin markets. To expand internationally, we plan to utilize regional partners, which can provide funding for regional production and commercialization, and/or partner with distribution and sales channels. Our target customers will be in several markets, and we plan to establish multiple sales channels into OEMs, as well as partnerships with direct suppliers to solar installers.
Adding Color to Solar PV
A surface that is black in color can absorb more visible light, so many solar PV materials are black. As many customers may prefer other colors, we plan to integrate an additional color layer to provide diverse colors for automotive, architectural, and surface-integrated solar PV. To have a non-black color means that some visible light must be reflected, so it will have a slightly decreased performance. We want to provide the choice to customers so that they can choose a surface color. We think that clean energy should be low-cost, well-performing, and also could be aesthetically appealing to more customers.
We plan to expand solar energy’s potential by increasing where and how it can be installed, from vehicles to complex cityscapes that could be producing clean energy, making large areas of solar PV possible within cities.
why invest
PI Energy has developed a novel and groundbreaking solar energy technology, creating the opportunity to accelerate the expansion of solar PV by making clean energy more practical and affordable than ever before.
PI Energy’s team is developing its proprietary materials to create a product with new and better capabilities for the renewable energy market: a solar energy module that is ultra-flexible, lightweight, non-toxic, durable, high performing, and made from earth-abundant materials. With PI Energy’s technology, we plan to expand and create new markets for solar energy, growing the solar PV market, so that clean energy will be far more accessible, practical, and cost-effective.
Company | : | Pacific Integrated Energy, Inc. |
Corporate Address | : | 6650 Lusk Blvd Ste B204, San Diego, CA 92121 |
Offering Minimum | : | $10,000.00 |
Offering Maximum | : | $3,938,287.50 |
Minimum Investment Amount(per investor) | : | $500.00 |
Offering Type | : | Equity |
Security Name | : | Common Stock |
Minimum Number of Shares Offered | : | 800 |
Maximum Number of Shares Offered | : | 315,063 |
Price per Share | : | $12.50 |
Pre-Money Valuation | : | $87,861,525.00 |
*Maximum Number of Shares offered subject to adjustment for bonus shares. See Bonus info below.
Investment Incentives*
Time-Based
Friends and Family Early Birds
Invest within the first 48 hours and receive additional 15% Bonus Shares.
Super Early Bird Bonus
Invest within the first week and receive additional 10% Bonus Shares.
Early Bird Bonus
Invest within the first two weeks and receive an additional 5% Bonus Shares.
Amount-Based
$1,000+ | Tier 1
5% Bonus Shares.
$2,500+ | Tier 2
7% Bonus Shares.
$5,000+ | Tier 3
10% Bonus Shares.
$10,000+ | Tier 4
15% Bonus Shares + Phone Call with the CEO.
*All perks occur when the offering is completed.
The 10% StartEngine Owners' Bonus
PI Energy will offer 10% additional bonus shares for all investments that are committed by investors that are eligible for the StartEngine Crowdfunding Inc. OWNer's bonus.
This means eligible StartEngine shareholders will receive a 10% bonus for any shares they purchase in this offering. For example, if you buy 100 shares of Non-Voting Common Stock at $12.50 / share, you will receive 10 additional shares, meaning you'll own 110 shares of Non-Voting Common Stock for $1,250. Fractional shares will not be distributed and share bonuses will be determined by rounding down to the nearest whole share.
This 10% Bonus is only valid during the investors eligibility period. Investors eligible for this bonus will also have priority if they are on a waitlist to invest and the company surpasses its maximum funding goal. They will have the first opportunity to invest should room in the offering become available if prior investments are cancelled or fail.
Investors will only receive a single bonus, which will be the highest bonus rate they are eligible for.
A crowdfunding investment involves risk. You should not invest any funds in this offering unless you can afford to lose your entire investment. In making an investment decision, investors must rely on their own examination of the issuer and the terms of the offering, including the merits and risks involved. These securities have not been recommended or approved by any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority. Furthermore, these authorities have not passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this document. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not pass upon the merits of any securities offered or the terms of the offering, nor does it pass upon the accuracy or completeness of any offering document or literature. These securities are offered under an exemption from registration; however, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not made an independent determination that these securities are exempt from registration.
To all our investors,
The future is just beginning, and we are committed more than ever to our goals of providing a commercially-competitive solution for solar energy at a global-scale.
Thank you for making our campaign a success!
Follow us on your preferred social media channel: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram
We have almost completed our offering on StartEngine. This will be the last update until the closing of this campaign.
Thanks to all our investors, we are advancing to a clean energy transition that can be commercially competitive and at a global-scale.
If you would like to invest more or have not yet had a chance to invest, this is the last call, with just a few hours remaining.
Thank you!
Today is the last day to join the future of globally-scalable solar energy.
Today we are closing our campaign on StartEngine. Thank you for following our progress. We are grateful for the support and trust.
Thank you!
Happy Father’s Day + Happy Juneteenth !
Today is a very special day. There is only one day left for the conclusion of PI Energy’s campaign on StartEngine.
We embrace the future with the excitement that flows from seeing our goal of many years within sight. Thank you for our investors for your support and trust.
For those of you who have not yet had a chance to invest, the opportunity is about to wrap up !
It is said that 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', and for us at PI Energy, this is how we see our latest prototype, in the image below. The sample was fabricated last week. It’s a refinement from our previous version, for better performance, on our path to optimization and progress.
We are working hard to advance our development to meet pilot deployment and broader commercialization goals. We continue to receive growing interest from companies and customers for our technology, and we are advancing as fast as possible. Thanks to our investors!
Acento Real Estate Partners (Acento) joined PI Energy’s Pilot Deployment Program, initiating a collaboration for planned pilot installations of PI Energy’s technology on residential, commercial, and industrial buildings (roofs, walls, fences and parking areas).
For more details, here is the official press release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220617005498/en/PI-Energy-Announces-Pilot-Agreement-with-Acento-Real-Estate-Partners
(image courtesy of Acento Real Estate Partners)
With over US $1 billion of AUM, Acento manages and operates a real estate portfolio extending across the US (Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Washington). Cumulatively, Acento’s buildings have about 8 million square feet of roofing and over 900,000 square feet of parking areas.
As we progress PI Energy’s technology development, we also are advancing our plans with partners for pilot deployments. With building installations, we intend to change the paradigm of where and how solar modules are installed, and these collaborations will help us demonstrate novel installation methods in real-world commercial conditions and collect data – so as to further optimize.
PI Energy’s campaign on StartEngine is ending in 3 days.
If you have not yet had a chance to invest, the time is now.
We are grateful to our investors. Our campaign on StartEngine is about to wrap up in just 4 days. We plan to advance further and faster from here.
Funding from investors has helped propel our technology forward. We feel profoundly humbled and grateful for the support.
We recently demonstrated flexibility of our solar cell and launched our Pilot Deployment Program, the company is moving into a higher gear. With these milestones, we move closer to making solar energy far more sustainable, practical and commercially competitive.
We aim to transform how energy is generated in many parts of the world, so that it is clean and much more abundant.
Thank you for helping us bring about a better future.
As our campaign will be ending in just six days, we want to address a frequent question: How are you going to market your products?
Our dialogues with potential customers, with many asking to pre-order our future product, indicate that we have a lot of demand for our technology. How is this possible? When a company is in the unique position of being the sole-provider of a technology that addresses an acute market need, that changes everything. Our team has spoken to over 300 companies that have asked to buy PI Energy’s modules as soon as they are available in the market, which gives us confidence that we are on the correct path. PI Energy’s target market is not just the current +$46 billion/year module market, we expect to substantially grow the market with our technology, because our technology enables solar PV modules that are: low-cost, nontoxic, perform well at high temperatures (when it’s sunny) and are installable on most surfaces (being ultralight and ultra-flexible).
Last month, after our fabrication agreement was made public, providing capabilities to meet our pilot installation goals, we started received growing number of requests for PV module pre-orders from large companies. We expect to pre-sell and have down-payments on orders for our PV modules even before we get into commercial-scale production. PI Energy’s Pilot Deployment Program will continue to expand, targeting installations for electric vehicles, residential and commercial/industrial markets:
Our campaign recently surpassed 700 committed investors! Thank you for joining us on the path to a cost-competitive transition to clean energy!
There are only 6 days left to be part of the future.
GoFor Industries, Inc (gofor) joined PI Energy’s Pilot Deployment Program, entering into an agreement with PI Energy for pilot installations of PI Energy’s game-changing solar photovoltaic technology.
For more details, here is the official press release on Business Wire: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220609005817/en/PI-Energy-Announces-Pilot-Agreement-with-GoFor-Industries-Inc
(image courtesy of gofor)
Gofor is a leading sustainable logistics company that operates a fleet of vehicles, servicing over 120 metropolitan regions in North America. Under the motto deliver better™, gofor is committed to “carbon free last mile” delivery. PI Energy’s technology can provide benefits to electric vehicle owners and operators by reducing the need for plug-in charging, extending battery life and performance, and providing range extension advantages.
As our technology development advances, we are preparing for pilot deployments. These collaborations will allow us to test in real-world commercial conditions and collect data, to optimize our commercialization path.
PI Energy’s campaign is ending soon on StartEngine. If you have not yet had a chance to invest, the time is now.
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