In 2021, clean energy is still limited and expensive

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).

Every day, our planet receives vast amounts of clean energy in the form of sunlight, and solar energy is by far the most abundant source of potential clean energy. With the right technology, properly harnessing the power of the sun could supply more than 1,400 times all the energy consumed by humans. 

Solar energy is the most abundant potential source of clean energy. Today, the installed cost of clean energy is still too expensive for most consumers in the US and around the world.  

Cost issues are even more important when we look at the worldwide deployment of clean energy. Global emissions growth will be largely determined by the energy choices of the most populous, least affluent, and fastest developing nations. To move away from a fossil fuel-driven development path, a low-cost, clean energy, that can be practically scaled globally is required (Source). 

With current market technologies, solar energy still represents less than 1% of global energy consumed. PI Energy intends to change this path to our energy future. 

(Source)

About 90% of installed solar PV modules are traditional crystalline-silicon (c-Si). This type of solar panel is relatively heavy, rigid and fragile; which makes it expensive to install and significantly limits what surfaces can be used for solar PV. These surfaces are mostly: roofs that can carry the additional weight, and solar farm projects which - both require heavy rack and mounting hardware. 

About 10% of the remaining installed solar PV in the market today is are Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) and Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS), which are somewhat flexible, but they 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 next generation of solar energy

We believe that PI Energy’s solar technology design is different from any solar PV in the market today. The key difference is the sum of properties: ultra-thin, flexible, non-toxic, durable, good performance, lightweight, and low-install cost. These advantages enable a vast amount of new applications like 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, as well as most fixed structures.

A global market with an ever-growing demand

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

TAM Source 1 and SAM Source 2

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 2019, Amazon announced it will purchase 100,000 new electric delivery vehicles (Source). 

In 2020, California passed a mandate that all new vehicles sold starting in 2035 must be EVs. 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)

Significant raises and improved technology

Transformational hardware innovation, including energy generation equipment, often takes many years to develop. This type of innovation is also known as “Deep Technology” (deep tech) or “Hard Technology” (hard tech) when a technology solution is based on substantial scientific and/or engineering challenges. 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 above present trends.

The estimated 2020 solar PV module global market is:

• Total: $46.6B
• Thin film: $9B

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. The goal of PI Energy is to enable a rapid expansion of clean energy globally by deploying its technology to make solar energy a competitive and practical energy choice for most consumers around the world. We see the present solar market as relatively small, in relation to its enormous potential. We want to harness market forces to deploy competitively priced clean energy at a global scale.

Shown below are a few images, out of over 2,000 fabricated prototype samples, in 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. Our goal is to produce the first integrated PV material of the current generation design in 2021. As a part of our development process, a full patent was filed for our current generation PV material design in December 2020.

Ultra-flexible and lightweight solar materials

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, made of earth-abundant and non-toxic 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 its power density 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:

• Installable on almost any surface (lightweight and thin).
• Free of toxic materials (does not create new problems).
• Composed of earth-abundant elements (unconstrained supply).  
• Good performance on hot sunny days.

This is what we are developing at PI Energy.

Making solar energy practical worldwide by opening up untapped markets

PI Energy needs to be efficient and seek out the path of least resistance, as we plan our entry into the global energy market, which was estimated at $1.089 billion in 2019. With many addressable market segments and consumer applications for PI Energy’s technology, there are several paths we have identified for commercialization: 

1. Unaddressed markets: In the first phase of commercialization, our product will be targeted toward customers and markets where other solar PV technology does not meet customer requirements. This untapped multi-billion dollar market requires a solar module technology that is lightweight, non-toxic, and flexible. These initial target markets include commercial/industrial sheet metal roofs, solar PV-on fabric, and electric and hybrid vehicles. We have met and discussed with several potential initial customers in several countries to better qualify these market segments’ needs. For these and other high-margin markets, PI Energy plans to utilize its planned small-scale production line.
   
   
2. Partnering with manufacturers/distributors: To bypass costly manufacturing scale-up and global distribution challenges, PI Energy plans to partner with high-volume manufacturers with global distribution. All of the potential partnership candidates we have currently met with are not fabricating solar cell materials but would like to expand their market with PI Energy’s technology.
   
   
3. Licensing: Our licensing approach allows us to provide our technology to multiple markets and regions. Licensing enables seamless integration with other products, including most vehicles, external building materials, equipment, textiles, and more.
   
   

Making solar PV practical, affordable, and easy to use

PI Energy’s solar cell technology provides unique market advantages over traditional solar PV.

According to the USGS, Indium and Tellurium, used in CIGS and CdTe solar cells, are not directly mined and are byproducts of copper and zinc mining and processing.

1. The market is dominated by c-SI modules, which have good performance and durability, but are rigid, fragile, and heavy - which limits how and where they can be installed, even at a high price.  
   
   ☀  PI Energy’s technology allows for solar materials that can be wrapped onto almost any solid surface at a low-installed cost.
   
   
2. The commercial market for traditional PV has been led by utility-scale, large solar farms, to take advantage of economies-of-scale. However, this requires the generated electricity to travel long distances from remote locations, to reach the point of electricity consumption.
   
   ☀ PI Energy’s technology is intended for installation on pre-existing surfaces, such as buildings, vehicles, and equipment, near where the electricity is consumed.
   
   
3. Current market rooftop solar PV requires rack and mounting hardware installation, which requires a roof to hold significantly more weight. This further limits where solar PV can be installed today.
   
   ☀  PI Energy’s technology is lightweight and wrappable. No need for cumbersome, heavy, and expensive rack and mounting hardware.
   
   
4. Most building codes restrict where traditional PV can be placed on rooftops.  Most current PV racks, mounts, and panels create obstructions for roof access, which can hinder roof inspection, repairs, and fire fighting.
   
   ☀  PI Energy’s technology allows for solar PV to be surface-integrated, placed directly on the roof, and span almost the entire roof area so that it can be walked on without blocking roof access.

To get the most energy from solar PV, it is best to keep solar modules from overheating, which is common on sunny days. Solar cell efficiency actually falls "with increasing temperature". More sunlight provides both energy, which can be converted into electricity, but also unconverted light, that turns into waste heat. This waste heat increases the temperature of the solar cell. At higher ambient temperatures this heat tends to get trapped in thicker solar cells, lowering their performance. Thin-film solar PV can dissipate heat faster and has much less degradation at higher temperatures than traditional thicker solar PV.

☀  PI Energy’s technology has the advantage of being very thin, with a solar cell that is only about 1/40th the thickness of traditional c-Si.  This allows a PI Energy solar technology to operate at higher ambient temperatures, with less efficiency loss than thicker traditional c-Si PV.

Long-term plans for clean energy 24/7

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.

While the sun provides ample energy that could meet all human energy needs, we need to manage the variation of sunlight due to night/day cycles and cloud cover. Initially, during the first years of commercialization, we expect that PI Energy’s technology will reduce the consumption of traditional energy generation. Over the longer term, to manage the variability of sunlight for fixed installations (e.g., building-integrated PV) and for electric vehicles, we need to look at two complementary solutions:  energy storage and thermal conversion energy technology. 

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. Using this model, we expect revenues will be more resilient because they are based on multiple markets, both traditional fixed installations and also consumer products. 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.

Complementary technology innovation

In addition to PI Energy solar PV technology, at an earlier stage of development, we have been working on complementary technology that could expand solar performance to include advanced thermal-to-electric technologies. These advancements come from work performed with university partnerships. Our long-term vision is represented in our company’s full name, Pacific Integrated Energy (abbreviated to PI Energy). We plan to provide a more integrated clean energy solution, providing clean energy 24 hours a day.

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, as we look down the energy transition path, to a clean energy future for the whole planet. We plan to partner with these companies in pilot projects and further collaborative commercialization, which could include a micro-grid that could be drop-shipped.

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.

Scientists and engineers working as a team for an impactful solution

PI Energy was founded by Phil Layton, a physicist and intellectual property attorney, with over 20 years of experience in nanotechnology development, aerospace, and defense commercialization of those technologies. PI Energy employs scientists and engineers with expertise in a wide array of fields, including materials science, device physics, chemistry, plasmonics, nanotechnology, nano-engineering, hardware testing, and fabrication. The team has been working together for 10 years, overcoming numerous challenges. They are veterans in commercial development. The team is highly motivated and passionate about advancing real-world commercial solutions for a better environment.

Groundbreaking technology for a cleaner, brighter future

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.