PI Energy’s solar cell is made of silicon, but unlike the traditional heavy and rigid version, our innovative technology can yield very flexible and lightweight modules.  We’re very excited to share with you this video demonstrating the flexibility of PI Energy’s proprietary solar PV cells.  

Ultra-flexible and lightweight modules are necessary to expand where solar energy can be practically installed at a low cost, allowing most surfaces to serve as an installation area for solar modules.  Traditional silicon modules make up over $40 billion of annual global sales, and they are the only stable nontoxic solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in the market today, at least for now... 

Our campaign is ending soon.   Join us in building the future with cost-competitive, practical and globally-scalable clean energy !  

An important advantage of PI Energy’s solar photovoltaic technology is flexible and ultralight materials, in addition to good stable performance with nontoxic earth-abundant elements.  This unique combination results in a game-changing solar technology.  Below is a recent photo of a PI Energy prototype, fabricated in our new contracted facility, that will undergo some flexibility testing.

We welcome you to invest while the opportunity is open. Our campaign is ending on June 20th.

Thank you!

Last week we received a visit from a shareholder and a friend:  Hugh Hodges.  

His visit at our San Diego facility marks the first in-person visit of new shareholder since 2020.   While we are busy working on technology and business details, we also love to see our shareholders, so for important investors, we will happily host and coordinate a visit.

David Andresen, Hugh Hodges and Phil Layton, in front of PI Energy’s San Diego location.

Hugh asks some of the best questions and we appreciate his feedback.  We look forward to more visits from our top shareholders.

We are happy to share a great milestone:  PI Energy has entered into an agreement with an advanced fabrication facility to make our solar cell photovoltaic materials in Arizona.  The semiconductor fabrication facility was initially built and operated by Motorola, to make flexible displays; and the facility was later transferred to Arizona State University (ASU).  

Besides the state-of-the-art fabrication and diagnostics equipment, the agreement provides us with additional complementary technical expertise at ASU, which is cutting edge in our area of interest.  This strengthens our technical capabilities and provides us access to state-of-the-art medium-scale manufacturing equipment, sufficient for our pilot installations plans.

The video below shows a few quick highlights from a recent work trip, where some of the PI Energy team traveled to the fabrication facility. We are excited to bring on more capabilities that advance us forward towards our goals.

We are grateful for the attention and support from all our investors.  

This is a notice to let you know that our campaign on StartEngine will be closing on Monday, June 20^th, 2022.  Some of the reasons for the shorter timeline are:

• Our pace of technical collaborations and new capabilities for PI Energy have crossed a new threshold. 
• Re-establishing large-scale semiconductor and solar photovoltaic manufacturing in the United States is getting growing public and private sector support:  this is a near-perfect match for PI Energy’s environmentally-friendly fabrication process.  
• We have started taking steps to formalize contracts for our pilot program with commercial entities. 

 The opportunity to invest is now.  Note that an investor may cancel an investment commitment for any reason until 48 hours prior to our close date, unless we have already disbursed your funds previously.

 Thank you for joining us on the path to a better world with solar energy that is far more competitive, sustainable and practical.

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There is a growing US policy drive to “reshore” important industries and fabrication back to the United States, reversing decades of offshoring.  The semiconductor industry has been getting a lot of US Federal and State support for reshoring <https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/21234163/how-the-us-can-reshore-semiconductor-manufacturing>, with a half a dozen large-scale fabrication facilities being built and or planned across the US.

supply chain issues with semiconductors, has led to reshoring efforts

PI Energy’s breakthrough solar cell technology is an ultra-thin semiconductor layer of silicon.  Our technology provides several advantages for US-based fabrication, including:

• Materials efficiency:  under 100 times less silicon than the majority of solar PV panels installed today.  
• Manufacturing efficiency:  our fabrication process that uses under 10 times less energy per gram of semiconductor than conventional solar PV. 

  Several agencies of the US Federal and State governments are increasingly backing semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.  The US Commerce Department is starting efforts to support growth in semiconductor production in the US.  < https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2022/01/commerce-department-requests-information-supporting-strong-us>  Recently, this tectonic shift has become evident to us, mostly as feedback that more resources becoming available to our technical collaborators, contractors and partners; even with new grants to cover some our planned efforts.

The increase in funding, awareness and support benefits PI Energy, with more public funding and growing private sector interest in participating in the rebirth of US-based high technology manufacturing.  PI Energy is leading innovation for solar PV, to start large-scale US fabrication of next-generation of solar modules, so we welcome more resources to make the future better.

Thank you to everyone who has invested so far.  There’s only a short window left to invest in this raise.  

If you’ve been following along our journey in creating next-generation solar technology and haven't yet invested - now is the time.

 Phil Layton

CEO & Founder  -  PI Energy

We wanted to give you a quick tour of where we fabricate our latest next generation solar cell technology.  This is a state-of-the-art facility that has the latest sophisticated equipment and tools and is in the video link below featuring some of our team members.  More to follow in future updates.

Fabrication facility video

Many of us are now familiar with unintended effects of today’s clean energy products, like lithium-ion batteries that use cobalt, which has been blamed for some of the “worse forms of child labor” in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

When we take a hard look at our industry, at today’s solar PV, we found a surprising link between rainforest deforestation and today’s crystalline-silicon supply chain, which provides most of the inputs to current silicon PV production.  During the initial steps of silicon processing, to make metallurgical-grade silicon, high-quality charcoal is used to remove the oxygen from quartz (Troszak, NATO, 2021).  Charcoal derived from hardwood mostly comes from rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia.   Making charcoal consumes even more hardwood, around 5 to 10 tons of hardwood for every ton of charcoal.

PI Energy‘s ultrathin silicon PV technology is revolutionary in several ways, including that it does not require metallurgical grade silicon, so no hardwood trees from the rainforest.  We can source our silicon from low impact sources and our process is far more energy efficient as well.  This approach benefits the future of rainforests, and it also translates into lower impacts and costs in our supply chain.

The future of clean energy has to be truly sustainable at-scale and cost-competitive.

In previous updates we showed our larger area solar PV cells.  This week, the team visited with our university partners and reviewed fabrication options and plans. Part of the trip included looking at some of the larger area and higher volume processing equipment.   Additionally, we discussed potential partnerships that would accelerate development faster.  Having the right team means we can identify the best path forward as efficiently as possible.

-Phil and Mike sporting the latest cleanroom fashion-

We are really excited about the possibilities from this partnership. Thank you for following our campaign and supporting the development of new solar technology. We invite you to invest in PI Energy to join us in our vision of expanding solar energy.

Here is a short video introducing some of the details of our new fabrication on commercial-grade equipment.  

We will be providing more information using videos, so if you have any suggestions on topics you would like us to cover, please let us know.

Thanks for joining us on our path to make solar energy better, more competitive and plentiful.

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We successfully completed an important milestone, transferring our process from a small university grade system to a much larger commercial system.  This dramatically increased the size of our solar PV cells.  In previous updates we shared some of the material process development steps along the way using the new fabrication system.  Last week we completed our first working solar PV cell on the new system.  We just electrically tested these devices with our solar simulator.  Testing has shown good results and that the fabrication process has transferred to the new larger area equipment, while also identifying areas for improvement.  

 Screen printing electrical contacts to testing

As part of the process, we screen printed electrical contact layers that you can see in the pictures above that allows us to test for uniformity across various areas of the cell.  

The next step in our development is to continue to optimize the process to improve performance.   

Tomorrow, April 22^nd, is Earth Day.  As we work hard to make a future of abundant clean energy, Happy Earth Day to all !

Thank you for making this campaign a success.   We recently surpassed another milestone in our equity crowdfunding campaign: over $800,000 in committed funds.  

We appreciate all those who have joined us and look forward to those who would still like to participate in our drive to expand solar energy’s potential. Please feel free to tell your friends about PI Energy and our goal of creating new markets and ways to use solar PV.

In this update we are going to address a question, on the energy intensity of fabrication, of traditional silicon PV compared to PI Energy’s technology.

 Traditional silicon PV energy intensity:

 About 96% of solar PV modules use silicon, and this traditional manufacturing process is dominated by fabrication facilities in east Asia, many of which are located near coal mines to meet power and supply requirements.

Traditional Silicon PV Supply Chain  (partial & simplified, image and data sources: NREL, 2018; and NATO, 2021) 

Silicon makes up about 25% of the earth’s crust, but traditional solar-grade silicon has to be extremely pure, often over 99.9999% pure, which currently entails long, complex, and very energy intensive steps.  Coal and charcoal are also used to refine silicon precursors to make polysilicon, further contributing to overall emissions of the traditional PV.   The current solar industry uses the Siemens Process and Fluidized Bed Reactors, followed by the Czochralski Process, to refine and purify, producing monosilicon (single crystal) ingots, with process temperatures over 2,500° F.  The ultra-pure monosilicon ingot is then sliced, creating the wafers upon which traditional solar cells are built, and further assembled into modules.

Czochralski crystal growth:  from polysilicon meltdown to monosilicon ingot  (“Silicon Crystal Growth and Wafer Technologies”, Fisher et al, 2012).

 PI Energy’s solution:

Instead of sawing crystal ingots, PI Energy's technology uses deposition processes, allowing us to use flexible substrates, resulting in a silicon PV layer that is extremely thin and lightweight - with less than 2% of the silicon contained in traditional PV.   Our proprietary technology utilizes low-temperature fabrication, entirely avoiding traditional energy-intensive Siemens Process, Fluidized Bed Reactors, and Czochralski Process. This further decreases the energy intensity and provides a far more efficient path to solar PV manufacturing. 

Lowering the energy intensity of solar PV fabrication is critical to making solar energy far more profitable, competitive, sustainable and globally scalable.   Thank you for joining us on our path to making the future bright and prosperous. 

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As we build larger area PV demonstration solar cells, our team is improving several aspects of our fabrication process.  Larger area solar cells need electrical contacts to connect and deliver power.  The picture below shows a test of the screen-printed metal contact layer that we will be depositing on the solar cell.  The next step in our development process is to deposit on a PV cell for electrical and solar testing.

Global energy is a multi-trillion dollar annual market which is at the beginning of a great transformation that will require innovative technologies, that are cost-competitive and can be scaled to address large markets.  Our investors are an integral part of our support as we push forward, developing new and better materials, for a sustainable energy transition.  

Thanks for joining us in building a better future.

We are excited and humbled by the investment and support of our shareholders.  Thanks to our shareholders we have reached the 600 investors milestone. 

 We are grateful for the trust and enthusiasm in building a better and more sustainable future with PI Energy’s technology.  More than ever, we are driving forward to make clean energy available to people worldwide, by making it far more competitive and practical.

 We invite you to invest again or for the first time.  Thank you!

With this update, we are addressing two important questions:   

• What is the composition of the PI Energy solar cell?
• Why is our team confident in the future success of the technology?  

PI Energy is a leading solar materials innovation company.  We are leveraging a proven material and configuring it in a new and better way.

1. We use silicon, the same element found in over 92% of solar modules made globally during 2021.  Silicon is earth-abundant, durable, and non-toxic; and as a solar PV material, it optimally matches the solar spectrum.  
2. Silicon PV is a well-proven technology, though the current (traditional) silicon PV requires a lot of energy to produce, and results in a relatively thick and heavy module, which increases total costs and limits where it can be installed.  
3. With PI Energy’s technology, we have adapted silicon PV to make it ultra-thin, about 1/50^th of the traditional thickness and weight, which results in an ultra-flexible PV film material.
4. We designed our technology to be scalable, capable of a global ramp-up, with a manufacturing process that uses fabrication hardware currently in use for other industries.  This significantly lowers the energy and materials (by about 1/50^th) for production, lowering the costs and carbon footprint of solar energy.  

PI Energy’s technology uses a proprietary light-trapping layer within its ultra-thin film, that leverages the advantages of silicon PV and enables new applications for solar energy.

Cross sectional diagram (approximately to scale) 

Our team, comprising physicists, engineers, and energy sector veterans, draws its confidence in PI Energy’s technology from the intrinsic advantages over traditional solar PV, which include:

• Combining the reliability of traditional c-silicon PV, with the flexibility of thin-film PV.
• Allowing solar PV to be installed on most surfaces, vastly expanding where and how solar energy can be installed and utilized.

Apple did not invent the smartphone and Tesla did not invent electric cars.  They made each product far better and transformed their markets.  PI Energy is creating a next-generation solar PV technology to take solar energy to the next level, leveraging the best that exists today and making it far better, even more competitive, and practical in current and exciting new applications.

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Transitioning transportation to electric is a way to reduce global emissions, by eliminating fossil fuel consumption with cleaner sources of electricity.  Land-based vehicles on wheels can be redesigned as EVs, though this can add substantial weight because of the mass of batteries required.  For example, a Volvo XC40 Recharge is about 47% heavier than the gasoline version XC40 for 2021.  Moving freight by ship is the cheapest way to move heavy cargo around the world, but is proving tougher to electrify.  Pure EV ships are feasible, but only at for short range use, like the Ellen, a Danish electric Ferry that started providing service in 2019 over a 40 km (25 mile) round-trip.  Another challenge with the limited range is that there are few recharging options in the open seas and oceans.

Today, cargo ships burn petroleum-derived fuels, sometimes “bunker fuel” - one of the cheapest and most polluting fuels.  To clean up shipping, a promising path is combining different modes of propulsion.  The concept of hybrid ship is ancient and goes back over 2,000 years to Phoenician and Greek ships, which had dual propulsion:  harnessing wind energy with sails and human-powered oars.  In the 19th century, early steam-powered ships often had sails.

          Greek trireme Olympias                                                                 Great Eastern - circa 1858

               (wind + oars)                                                                                (coal-fired steam + wind)

In recent years several companies have started to add sails to modern ships, to reduce fuel consumption, going back to a hybrid propulsion.  An innovative Swedish company, Wallenius Marine, is developing wind-powered ship, the Oceanbird, a large 32,000 ton displacement and 660 ft (200 m) length vessel.   Its intended use is for transatlantic cargo starting in 2024.  The ship has an auxiliary engine to maneuver in harbors and for emergency power.

With PI Energy, our planned commercial product enables PV for most surfaces, including ships.  We plan to sell our product for use on conventional ships as well as new wind-harnessing designs, like the Oceanbird, to have PI Energy’s solar PV on many of the external surfaces.  This would provide additional power both when the ship is in the harbor and at sea, including when the wind resources are low.

                          Wallenius Marine's Oceanbird ship                                                                       Oceanbird concept with PI Energy PV

(CC BY-SA 4.0)

 In the image on the right, we reimagine the Oceanbird with most if the ship’s external surfaces covered with PI Energy’s PV.   The Oceanbird would have no need for fuel and maintenance and operational costs would be substantially reduced.  Making shipping cleaner, more efficient and sustainable is important for a global transition to renewable energy.

Our team is working diligently to fabricate and improve our solar materials.   We always love to share some photos of our development advances.  An important component of our technology is how we modify our materials’ semiconductor layers, in order to achieve the desired properties.  Here are some recent pictures of our team members processing and evaluating some of our test materials. 

More than ever, clean energy is important for people everywhere.  Our goal is to use our proprietary technology to make clean energy far more practical, low-cost and globally-scalable.

The European Union’s energy policy is undergoing a profound reexamination.  This has led to EU policy shift to ramp up clean energy.  It is significant because of its global implications, with the EU’s population of about 447 million and an economic output similar to the US.  There is a notable mega-project proposal (Desertec), which has been hampered by technical and cost issues for many years.  PI Energy’s technology has the potential to provide an enabling solution. 

The 1986, Chernobyl nuclear accident led a German physicist, Dr. Gerhard Knies, to propose a daring solution to provide renewable energy for Europe, Middle East and North Africa. The plan was to deploy a large-scale solar installations in deserts across North Africa and the Middle East, providing renewable energy for Europe, while creating jobs, revenue and modern infrastructure throughout. 

Now may be the time to dust off Dr. Knies’ trans-continental clean power plan, that evolved into “Desertec”, a name used by both a non-profit foundation and an industrial consortium.  The latest plan from the Desertec Foundation advocates for a high-voltage link between Europe, North Africa and parts of the Middle East; with power generation that could connect solar thermal, wind, solar photovoltaic, biomass, geothermal, and hydroelectric power plants. 

Desertec Foundation’s plan

Until 2022, Desertec was considered by many European energy experts as stalled, chiefly due to high costs, as well as concerns on exploitation of low-income communities and authoritarian regimes.    

In an increasingly interconnected world, there are ways to address most of these concerns, and maybe, a first step forward should be with better technology with more competitive costs.  Also, starting collaborative installations in countries that are more democratic and near the EU, like Tunisia and Morocco, is likely to yield better results.  Reexamining the current choice of Desertec’s leading renewable technology choice is important, as solar thermal plants do require heavy and expensive equipment, lots of maintenance, and consume water that is often scarce in the desert. 

When it comes to cost, PI Energy’s technology is designed to deal with desert conditions:

• Better high-temperature performance than traditional c-Si PV.
• No need for water that is required in solar thermal facilities.
• Easy installation.
• Low land-use impacts.
• Lightweight and shock resistant - good for transport over rough terrain.

 With PI Energy’s technology’s advantages, we would like to advance projects like Desertec, to deploy solar energy in broadly and in new ways.  Thank you for sharing our goal to advance clean energy, making a better and more secure future.

 Also, for those who were unable to reconfirm your recent investment and had your funds returned, we invite you to reinvest.  If you have any questions about your investment status, you can check your Investor Dashboard and reach out to the StartEngine Investor services team at contact@startengine.com

Many countries have supported the growth of solar energy, by creating financial incentives for large solar projects that could feed renewable energy into the electric grid.  These solar farms, or utility-scale projects, use current market-available PV technologies to cover acres of land with ground-mounted solar panels.  Both fertile and arid land is impacted, and the landscape is transformed with these large projects.

This has been the beginning of the solar energy industry, and there are some unintended undesirable effects of some large projects, including:

• Grid-congestion:  As the solar projects are often far from where the electricity is consumed, it has to be transmitted over long distances on high power lines, creating additional costs. 
• Land-use and Wildlife impacts:  These large projects cover a lot of land.  Sometimes land affected is potential farmland or wilderness areas.  The US Dept. of Energy is now founding a program to evaluate wildlife impacts of solar PV, as the US looks to add millions of acres of new PV.

 PI Energy’s technology enables a new rethinking of how solar projects could be better in the future.  As we come to rely on far more solar energy, it needs to be cost-competitive and sustainable.  PI Energy is developing solar PV that is designed to be: thin, lightweight, flexible, nontoxic and easy to install.  So, now we can contemplate making solar projects in urban and suburban areas; covering large area roofs, walls, fences and  shading structures.  With a cumulative effective area equal to a traditional solar project,  the cityscape can be the locaton of future solar projects.

The benefit of placing new solar projects on urban landscapes: 

• No need to transmit the power along high voltage power lines, because it can be consumed locally.
• No need to use new land, so no new wildlife or land-use impacts. 

With PI Energy’s technology we can make sustainability far more cost-competitive and practical.  Thank you for joining us in on our path to make solar energy bigger and better.

(source: NATO)

NATO produced a  solar energy report :  “The hidden costs of solar photovoltaic power.  The report reviews today’s solar PV industry, looking at:  raw materials sourcing, silicon smelting, wafer production, cell & module fabrication, transport, installation, and end of service life.  The report  focuses primarily on current c-silicon PV, that is found in about 96% of global solar modules sold.  The report states:

“Despite many optimistic predictions, solar photovoltaic (solar PV) power still represents only a small fraction of the global electricity supply as of 2020.  More than two decades of near-exponential growth and investment in solar PV development have taken place, yet the amount of fossil fuels being burned for power is still increasing.”

The principal problems the NATO analysis identifies is that today’s solar PV is very resource and energy intensive to fabricate and install.   Sunshine is the most abundant source of potential clean energy, we should make better use of it.  

PI Energy is developing novel solar PV technology that uses significantly less energy and less materials, while also using nontoxic and earth-abundant elements.  Additionally, the thin film PV is flexible and lightweight, so that it can be installed on most surfaces at a low-cost. 

A future of global clean energy can bring climate benefits as well support energy independence, which may necessary for a better and more peaceful world.

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Over the past two months, PI Energy has expanded its technical collaborations with a new development partner, another university in the US.  We are excited that this new partnership provides us with additional prototype fabrication and testing capabilities, specifically for larger area prototypes and faster fabrication rate on commercial-grade equipment.  This collaboration speeds up our technical development towards our commercialization goals.

 The picture below is the latest P4 solar cell materials prototype, from last week, much larger that we were fabricating just a few months ago.  The 6-inch wide circular wafer contains a darker square, that is area treated with our proprietary materials’ process.  This is one of the last precursor steps to building a completed (P4) solar cell.

Thank you for funding the future of clean energy !

Part of our development plan includes third-party testing.  While we are advancing towards completion of our technology development, our team has recently initiated discussions with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a US national laboratory of the Department of Energy, to establish procedures for future validation testing of our P4 solar cell.  NREL solar PV testing is generally understood as one of the gold standards for solar materials evaluation.  Independent testing is important for commercializing technology, to show performance based on industry standard benchmarks.  NREL operates both solar PV outdoor test facilities and Regional Test Centers.

Along with our plan to conduct testing at NREL, once we complete our P4 solar cell development, we also intend to separately pursue the first phase of initial pilot deployments.  Some potential customers would benefit from NREL testing results and others are ready to conduct their own testing, in small portions of areas, for example on electric buses and industrial roofs.

Thank your for following our progress!

We want to take the opportunity to address two frequent questions we have been asked:  Why are some EV bus companies interested in PI Energy?  Why don’t EV bus companies instead just get PV modules from current-market module suppliers?

While passenger vehicles might be driven less than an hour a day, it is common for some buses to be driven up to 16 hours per day.   In most cases, the massive EV battery of the bus can be the most expensive element of the vehicle, so anything that can improve the battery’s performance or extend operating life is highly desirable.   

A solar PV roof on a bus has the potential to charge the battery and add range extension.  Most bus roofs span about 20 to 40 m² (215 to 431 square feet), a lot area to collect sunshine.  Fast charging accelerates battery degradation.  Solar PV on an EV bus provides two clear benefits:  passive added driving range from sunlight, and gentle PV recharge that reduces the number of fast-charging events on the battery.  Both benefits translate into lower EV operating costs, as the battery life and performance are extended if the right PV can be added.   

During our discussions with EV bus operators and suppliers, we have found that most are interested in PV materials for their vehicles.  However, they had not found any current PV market solutions (c-Si, CdTe and CIGS) that could practically meet their EV bus requirements, including:  low module costs, lightweight, low installation costs, nontoxic components, and durability.  

Even at PI Energy’s current precommercial stage, our technology’s advantages are compelling for EV bus applications.  It is a practical PV solution, that may be wrapped on the roof and along the sides of vehicles.  This is why, a school bus company and a mass transit bus company are part of our planned pilot installations.

We invite you to invest and accelerate a transition to clean energy.

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Cleantechnica just published an article titled “Renewable Choices: Global Clean Technology Transition”, authored by PI Energy: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/04/renewable-choices-for-global-clean-technology-transition/

If you have not joined us already, we invite you to invest, share with others, and become part of our mission to accelerate a transition to clean energy.

A large proportion of PV installations around the world are solar farms (utility-scale projects).  They are characterized as ground-mounted systems that extend over a large area of land.

The ground mounted hardware is often made from aluminum that has significant carbon footprint, up to “14 to 16 metric tons of CO₂” per ton.

At PI Energy we do not think that the future of solar PV is in traditional solar farms.   We think solar projects do not need to occupy new land.  The ground mounted hardware, land and transmission lines adds a lot of costs.  With PI Energy’s technology we want to put more solar PV on existing surfaces and structures, including buildings, warehouses, walls, electric vehicles and more.  This approach can substantially reduce costs, make solar energy more practical and eliminate a lot of emissions.

Thank you for following our campaign and we invite you to support us and help the move to a better way to generate renewable energy.

We want to take the opportunity to address a frequent question that we have been asked: what is your pilot deployment plan?  This is an important topic, since it is our next step towards commercialization. 

Our team has spoken with many potential customers across a range of markets and has crafted a commercialization strategy that is: compatible with our technology path, capital efficient, and enables us to scale-up to deploy into large markets.  

As we advance our technology development, our team is preparing to demonstrate our materials’ performance to future commercialization partners (companies that would partner with PI Energy in the future to commercially deploy our technology).    The first phase is a device demonstration at our facilities, and the second phase involves signing an agreement to install a pilot demonstration for a particular market segment

Our current requirements for initial pilot installations are:

1. Addressing a market segment opportunity where PI Energy’s technology can uniquely provide clear advantages over existing PV technologies.  
2. Funding of initial pilot installations to be provided by the commercialization partner or grant.
3. Performance data from the installation to improve and understand the technology’s performance under real life conditions.

A commercialization partner in a pilot deployment would have a local or market advantage that is agreed upon with PI Energy, providing them a commercial, limited exclusivity for a certain amount of years in a specific market. 

The level of maturity of potential pilot partner opportunities ranges from discussions to signed MOU.  Here are a sample of some of the potential initial pilot installations that we are planning:

Each one of the opportunities above is a potential entry into large market segments, so our initial pilot deployment plans would be followed by a partnership with a large fabrication collaboration for larger-scale manufacturing and distribution, so that we can scale to meet a global demand.

Keep the questions coming and join us on our path to expand clean energy, creating new applications for solar PV.

As we advance our technology development, our team is going forward in preparation to demonstrate our materials’ performance to future commercialization partners (companies that would partner with PI Energy in the future to commercially deploy our technology).  

Back in November 2021 we shared plan to increase the area of our samples.  

We have started processing and testing one of the key layers of the larger area samples using the new equipment.  Below are two versions, a subdivided sample on the left (to test multiple process parameters on the same sample) and a contiguous area on the right. 

Jan 2022 – PI Energy’s materials processed at low temperatures

What is exciting is that the materials in the images were processed at low temperatures, which is important for several reasons, including that it enables us to have a low energy fabrication process and it also enables PI Energy’s solar cell to be deposited on a flexible substrate – so that we can have ultralight and flexible solar modules, which is our plan.

We invite you to participate in our campaign to accelerate a global transition to clean energy.

We just passed $700k raised on this Reg CF.   

Time to join us as we move forward to develop the next generation of solar PV materials.  

Building a solar device is all about layers, and several of these need to be done under controlled conditions to get them just right. We recently updated you about our move to larger-area wafers, and with that comes the need to do all this processing on a larger scale. Here we have a video showing the new larger area chamber while testing it on the XY stage.:

The chamber is sealed to better control the environment. During processing, this chamber pulls a vacuum, getting all of the oxygen out to prevent material contamination. We also created a moving track so that downstream layer processing can be done in a precise, repeatable way while still being under these conditions.  After processing is completed, the wafer is removed and no longer needs to be isolated from the air.

Thank you for following our progress and if you have not joined already, we invite you to become a shareholder by investing in the future of clean energy with PI Energy.

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The current PI Energy Reg CF campaign reached the 500+ investors milestone for the current round of funding, and we are grateful to all our investors for making it possible. 

If you would like to invest more or have not yet had a chance to invest, we invite you to participate.

Supply chain problems continue around the world, impacting goods shipped across regions.  Today, about 85% of the world’s solar module manufacturing is in east Asia, with China in the top position.  Traditional c-silicon PV is found in about 96% of solar modules sold currently and this process is energy intensive as mentioned in our previous update.  Just like smelting of a metallic ore that require large furnaces, energy intensive processes tend to aggregate in few locations, into large industrial clusters, driven by economies of scale in locations of abundant and low-priced electrical supply, which today includes coal-fired power plants.  

Clean energy needs to be more efficient.  

Current Solar PV industry silicon smelter and silicon ingot prior to slicing into wafers.

At PI Energy we are determined to transform the solar energy market by lowering the manufacturing costs, as well as making PV installable on most surfaces.  Our recent fabrication tests and processing at room temperature significantly reduce the energy costs for fabrication of our proprietary solar cell technology.  One of the results of energy efficient manufacturing is that manufacture of solar PV can be competitively manufactured in more locations, enabling more distributed manufacturing around the world, mitigating supply chain vulnerability in each region, as well as lowering costs.

We are passionate to make the next generation of solar energy materials so that clean energy is practical and cost competitive at a global scale. 

We would like to wish a very happy holidays to our investors, followers, and potential investors! We're beyond grateful for the success we've had in this campaign, and you have made that possible.

As we close out what's been an unusual year to say the least, we've made some great strides in manufacturing, including new collaborative partnerships for processing, discovering novel ways to reduce high-temperature steps to as low as room temperature (lowering production costs, energy usage and increasing possible substrates), and integrating our device layers to produce a fully functional P4 prototype.

We are looking forward to continuing with technology development next year and bringing larger area working prototype soon.

Thank you for your support!

Last week we mentioned positive progress on our fabrication results, with room temperature processing of our materials.  Far lower temperatures allow for solar cells to be laid down on low-cost substrate materials, which is important for ultra-thin lightweight PV.  There are other benefits including lower cost manufacturing from lower processing energy requirements, and low temperature processing avoiding undesirable reactions during deposition of the solar cell materials that can occur at high temperatures.  

Here is a photo of a recent processing run where the same solar cell material is undergoing multi-variable tests under different conditions, including room temperature.  The sample materials have a tracking grid, labeled with letters and numbers, with each sub-area under slightly different processing parameters.  This allows us to track which set of fabrication conditions result in improved materials for each fabrication iteration.

This is a necessary part of taking our technology forward in materials development so that we can advance towards a commercial solution to bring a next-generation of solar PV to the world.

Thank you for following our progress and if you have not joined already, we invite you to become a shareholder by investing in the future of clean energy with PI Energy.

PI Energy’s technology enables a far lower energy use for fabrication of its non-toxic and stable solar PV materials.  We have recently demonstrated one of the key processing steps at room temperature.

Many traditional solar PV modules are made using the Czochralski process at temperatures of over 1,400 °C (2,500 °F), the total process consumes about 11 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per kilogram of silicon.

For PI Energy, the layers are not only far thinner, using less material,  but also are formed at far lower temperature.   A key material deposition process demonstration run  in Nov.-Dec. 2021 was conducted at room temperature.   We were expecting this process to be at low temperature, but were pleasantly surprised when we were able to successfully process the layer at room temperature.  This is a big breakthrough for us since this benefits our final PV cell in several ways, including better performance of the cell layers, lower energy cost for production and enabling new low-cost flexible substrate materials that wouldn’t be available otherwise.

Making solar materials that can be installed on almost any surface, because they are lightweight, flexible, made of earth-abundant materials and non-toxic is only part of making PV globally scalable.  It is important that the manufacturing of the PV cell should use a lot less energy, to lower costs and minimize the impact of the manufacturing process itself.  That is the technology we are developing at PI Energy.  

Thank you for being part of the next-generation of clean energy.  If you have not investor already, please join us to move the world to a low-cost clean energy transition.  

The links between three recent events lay bare problems with the current path to clean energy transition.  The unusually heavy rainfall in Shanxi province during October 2021 resulted in extensive flooding of coal mines, which led to the increase in the price of traditional solar PV modules, and causing delay or cancellation of about 50 gigawatts of utility-scale solar PV in the coming year, 

There is a strangely irony in that extreme weather can lead to reduced traditional solar energy installations and that  Coal and natural gas effect the availability and pricing of  current market solar PV.

Traditional solar PV has made important contributions to clean renewable energy.  At PI Energy we value the decades of work of generations of specialists laying the foundation PV.  We just want to make solar energy cleaner going forward.  

Coal and natural gas power the fabrication and installation of many current renewable energy technologies, from traditional solar PV to wind turbines, largely because current market solutions require a lot of energy to build and fossil fuels provide more than 80% of all energy consumed.

At PI Energy our solar PV materials are ultra-thin and our planned modules would require far less energy to produce than traditional panels.  There is a positive feedback between low-energy intensity fabrication and being far cleaner in terms of emissions.  Using far less energy to make novel solar energy materials, results in a process that is far cleaner and more competitive.  

As we move forward and grow the solar energy markets, the primary energy for fabrication of the modules will increasingly be clean energy, which is why we are passionate about accelerating the energy transition.  Thank you for joining us on our path!

Thank you to everyone who reconfirmed their investment! We're excited to continue this journey in making this next-generation solar technology.

For those who were unable to reconfirm, we would love for you to consider reinvesting. If you have any questions about your investment status, you can check your Investment Dashboard and reach out the StartEngine Investor services team at contact@startengine.com

We are making good progress on our technology development.  Next week we will be sharing some new details.  The campaign is advancing well and we recently crossed the $600k milestone.  

Thank you for helping us advance towards a world of clean energy.  If you would like to invest more or have not invested yet, we invite you to participate.  Please feel free to tell your friends about PI Energy and the future of clean energy.

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As we move forward on PI Energy’s solar PV development, much of our current work is in determining how to optimize each fabrication step.  Below are recent photos from last week of processing test solar materials under different conditions.  It is the same prototype rotated.  The surface appearance changes depending on the angle of the incident light.  

The test samples above hold nine different squares of the same material, undergoing a fabrication step under different conditions.  We can tell that some of the squares look promising, while others, like the pale gray and white areas, were not the correct processing condition.  

These tasks are crucial for our materials development to determine the optimal fabrication parameters. We are excited to advance our technology forward.

Thanks for you support and joining us in our goal.

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PI Energy is developing solar PV that can be wrapped on electric vehicles, enabling free energy whenever there is sunshine.

 The cost of gasoline has surged in recent weeks in the US.  The transition to clean energy with solar PV brings benefits beyond lower emissions.    

Fossil fuels for transportation must be extracted, refined and transported for every use.  With renewable energy, once the upfront investment is made and the installation is complete, then the energy supply will be ongoing for years or decades. 

 PI Energy plans to make clean energy far more practical and cost-competitive than traditional sources, with expected module life of over 20 years.  We want to make the problem of surging fuel prices a thing of the past.

We hope you will join us on this journey to clean energy.

We wanted to share with you a look into some of our non-proprietary material development.

We are evaluating various ultra-thin substrates to support our super-thin solar PV.  Here is one of those materials below, it is robust and flexible glass film, and it comes in many sizes and by the roll.  We are evaluating its properties as a substrate on which we can place our solar PV cell.

Thank you for joining us on moving our disruptive technology forward to commercial products.   

Onward and upwards !

We are humbled and grateful for the support and trust of all our investors.  We have made an important funding milestone, $500k.  Thank you for helping make this campaign a success.   

We appreciate the community, our shareholders and supporters in helping us reach this important milestone.   

We invite you to participate.  Please tell your friends about PI Energy and the opportunity to expand how we use clean energy.

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We recently updated our campaign video on our StartEngine page.

We are constantly striving to improve our communications. 

Please feel free to share and let us know what you think.

Thank you!

We are happy to share that we recently entered into an agreement with an additional materials processing contractor here in the US.  This is exciting for us because it allows us to move faster, with larger, and higher-quality devices at a competitive cost.  Working with outside technical contractors also enables us to identify the best-in-class processing equipment without having to purchase the specialized hardware until after we complete our solar cell development.

The image above is from November 1, 2021, showing multiple wafers with materials between processing steps, where layers are added and/or modified.  As we mentioned in an update last month, we are increasing the size of our prototype solar cells, which is also a big deal for us.

With better tools, quality partners and technical contractors we are moving faster towards our goals.

 If you haven’t already, we invite you to join us and invest in our path to make solar energy truly practical and cost-competitive across the world.  Clean energy needs to be globally deployed to reach real sustainability.  Thank you! 

Fossil fuel prices have been increasing in recent months.  Some cities in California are seeing record gasoline prices at the pump and Texas gasoline prices have surged to levels not seen in many years.  Market analysts have pointed to fossil fuel price increase as a result of higher demand and short-term supply problems, but how does this affect solar energy?  

A surge in fossil fuel prices has been seen as a benefit to renewable energy, but maybe the answer is not so simple.  All products, including wind turbines and traditional solar PV modules, require energy to fabricate, transport and install.  Most of today’s solar PV is manufactured using a lot of energy supplied from the burning of coal.  Extreme weather has been blamed for flooding dozens of mines in Shanxi province, leading to coal shortages, which has led to a surge in prices of traditional PV panels in China, that makes the majority of the global supply today.  Consequently, more than half of large utility-scale solar PV projects worldwide for 2022 could be at risk due to the price increases.  

The problem is that today’s traditional solar PV still consumes too many materials and energy derived from fossil-fuels. 

PI Energy’s technology is designed to utilize far less materials, with solar cell that is about 1/40 the thickness of traditional PV.  Also, a far thinner solar cells is far lighter and easier to transport, as well as requiring less energy to install.  With our technology, the next-generation of solar PV will take far less energy and materials to fabricate.  Thank you for supporting us in our goals to make Renewable Energy cleaner, far more competitive and scalable worldwide.  

As part of PI Energy’s outreach Podcasts, PI Energy's CEO, Phil Layton interviewed our business advisor Charles Bayless. They discuss some of the over-arching issues with utility-scale energy, energy policies and climate change.

Mr. Bayless previously served as CEO of both Tucson Electric Power Company and of Illinova Corporation, was provost of West Virginia Institute of Technology.   Currently  Mr. Bayless is the Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Arctic Climate Action Registry (ACAR) and is a lecturer on energy policy and climate change.  

The podcast is here:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1564619/9415442

Read more about Charles here.

Thank you for joining our campaign to advance clean energy with PI Energy’s solar PV technology.

Moving to a clean energy transition is often understood just as a decrease of fossil fuel consumption, but it should also include making solar and wind energy cleaner and more competitive.  Many large wind turbines use diesel power at times.  For large wind turbines in remote locations, diesel generators can provide power to maneuver the turbine and adjust the blade pitch, when there is insufficient wind or if the wind is too strong to operate safely. 

While the theoretical potential of solar PV is more than 300 times that of wind energy, there are many locations around the world, including remote areas, with good wind resources.  Wind and solar energy actually complement each other most of the time, as it is often cloudy when the wind is strong and often sunny when the wind resources are low.

With PI Energy’s technology, solar PV can directly support wind energy by replacing diesel, generating electrical power that can be used or stored in a battery.  Here is how we conceptualize a large wind turbine before and after solar PV is integrate­­d on the surface of the tower:

We want to thank Kelly for the comment which led us to think about the details for wind turbines.  Thank you for your support to make a better clean energy future for all.

We are refining and improving for our technology fabrication.  Here is a photo of PI Energy materials being processed during a development run. 

Thank you for helping to fund new opportunities for clean energy !

Most of today’s solar PV modules are made in just three countries, which contain several multi-billion dollar PV factory complexes.  Traditional crystalline-silicon modules, with 96% of PV global sales, are heavy and rigid, so not ideal to be moved across the planet.  To really grow clean energy globally, fabrication and logistics of solar energy have to become more efficient as well as more flexible.  Long supply chains create a vulnerability, where a local problem can lead to product shortages in another continent.  With the majority of nations planning a transition to clean energy, the global supply of solar PV needs to be re-imagined.  

Today, most of the manufacturing of PV modules is concentrated in just the three top PV module manufacturing countries, all in east Asia:  China, Malaysia and South Korea; which together produce over 85% of solar PV modules, marked in green on the map:

Source: IEA  PVPS & RTS Corporation

Already, supply chain problems and trade disputes are causing traditional PV module shortages and price increases.  As we move forward to better and lower cost PV, the locations of manufacturing and assembly should be distributed, so that the supply chains vulnerabilities can be reduced.  Here is a map of the top 28 top manufacturing nations that represent 85% of global manufacturing marked in brown:

With PI Energy’s technology, we can re-imagine a more sensible future for solar module fabrication, even more distributed that even today’s leading manufacturing nations, so that PV manufacturing and module assembly can be truly global, distributed across multiple locations on every inhabited continent, so that each facility can supply product locally.  Our technology enables a far lower-cost manufacturing process, that can be located in more places.  To increase renewable energy, the whole world needs solar PV that can be manufactured globally.

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We want to share with you our development milestone plan for the next four months.  PI Energy is advancing its P4 solar cell development in two key parameters: increasing area and efficiency.  Our Sept. 2021 prototypes were smaller area solar cells made on R&D fabrication equipment, which is more practical for initial process development 

We are now preparing to fabricate solar cells using commercially available equipment for the next revision of our P4 solar cell.  This approach will produce much larger devices that should also exhibit improved efficiency. 

These next development steps are important for our commercialization path.  Thank you for your support towards these important milestones.  

If you haven’t had a chance before, Invest now to join us in this journey.

During 2019 and 2020, the US installed about 12% of the global solar module supply (IRENA). As a result of global supply chain and trade issues, US solar PV installations are now facing higher prices and a restricted component supply from current global PV suppliers.  The US only produces 3% of solar modules installed globally (IEA 2020).  Only 1% of solar cells produced globally, the critical component of solar modules, are fabricated in the US:    

For the US to meet its clean energy goals, it is important to develop a far larger solar PV module manufacturing base in North America.  PI Energy’s technology is ideally suited for a fast ramp-up of local solar module fabrication, while using non-toxic and earth-abundant elements, for a low-cost and competitive clean energy.

Thank you for helping us grow the solar energy market here and around the world.

A lack of EV charging stations is a bottleneck for EV growth.  PI Energy’s technology has the potential to reduce the huge costs of needed charging stations and infrastructure that are required to meet electric vehicle growth targets.

Most developed countries are targeting policies to increase EV sales.  The current policy target of the US is for zero-emission vehicles to make up 50% of all new vehicles sold in 2030.  The European Union has an aggressive policy goal that effectively bans new fossil-fuel cars by 2035.  This is good news for EV enthusiasts, but with current market technologies, this will require a vast increase in charging stations and large-scale upgrades to the US electrical grid.

Today, the majority of EV owners in the US have some charging at home, but to expand the market, we will need to address the needs of EV owners who don’t have this option.  In the US there are about 50,000 publicly-accessible charging stations, with most being installed with state and federal subsidies over the past decade.  Future EV charging costs are projected to increase substantially.  The best estimates we have seen predict a need for more than 1.2 million new charging stations to meet EV growth targets in the US.  

To meet the double challenge, of increasing commercial charging costs and the need for millions of new charging stations. PI Energy plans to capitalize on this opportunity by enabling solar PV on zero-emission vehicles, reducing the need for grid connected charging with free solar energy, potentially saving US consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars of charging and infrastructure costs.  

We want to make EV more practical and save customers money by using our technology.

As always, thank you to everybody who has invested, we are humbled and grateful for your support and for joining us on our path to a better energy future for all.  We are making good progress.  

Last week we got exciting results from our most recent solar PV prototype performance, with a substantial improvement (3x).  We are putting your hard-earned money to work, and we appreciate you helping us advance to make clean energy commercially competitive and abundant.

Thank you!

We want to share recent results from last week on PI Energy’s solar PV process development. With our most recent prototype we measured an efficiency improvement of over 200% over the previous run. We are excited about the progress of our P4 solar cell design, which we plan to advance to commercialization. Here below is our most recent prototype from September 16, 2021. The blue regions are the PI Energy PV solar cell.

Thank you for joining us on our path to a better future!

We need to consider the entire lifecycle of solar PV, especially as it is scaled globally. It is important to minimize the end-of-life impact of solar PV.  Solar panels that were installed 20 to 25 years ago are starting to be replaced with newer panels.  CdTe and CIGS solar PV contain toxic cadmium, and perovskite-based PV contains water-soluble lead, so special materials handling is required, which is expensive and in some cases can even exceed the cost of the panel.  

Luckily, the majority of the traditional solar PV panels are made with crystalline-silicon (c-Si), which is not toxic, but the panels are relatively heavy, which can make the transportation costs to a recycling facility as much as the cost of recycling itself.  In the US, most of the old c-Si panels go to the landfill, with only about 10% being recycled.

Clean energy must be sustainable. PI Energy’s technology has significant advantages for long-term sustainability and cost reduction that are important for recycling, mostly by virtue of being lightweight and non-toxic.  At the end of 30 years, we expect that PI Energy’s PV materials may be replaced with a better performing and newer PI Energy PV film.  Without toxic materials, recycling is easier and lower-cost.  Also, being lightweight and flexible allows for far lower transportation costs.  PI Energy’s significantly thinner solar cell also reduces the amount of materials to be recycled in the future.  

It is important to plan long-term and related costs, so we can make a transition to sustainable clean energy that is cost-competitive. Thank you for joining us on our path to a better future.     

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Here is a photo, from August 2021, of a PI Energy precursor material, for a solar cell, being prepared for processing.    

Technology development includes working through the details of each step of fabrication - these are the steps of progress.

Invest now to join us on this journey forward.

PI Energy’s technology brings several benefits to the rapidly growing electric vehicle (EV) market.    Here will briefly highlight of three important enhancements that our technology can bring to the EV battery. 

PI Energy – concept installation for an EV                                                                                        Schematic of an EV showing the battery packs.

Applying  PI Energy’s PV on a large portion of the vehicle’s surface, could provide a meaningful recharge to the battery.  The resulting benefits to the battery would include:

1. Reduced need for fast charging.
2. Reduce deep discharge and prolonged low state of charge conditions.
3. Practically eliminate battery drain due to thermal management when the vehicle is parked at a hot sunny location.

These three benefits prolong battery life and performance, while extending the vehicle range and improving battery safety, which in turn can lower the cost of electric vehicles and lower operating costs - accelerating the growth of the global EV market.

If you would like to invest again in PI Energy or participate for the first time, we invite you to join in.  Please feel free to share with your friends our goal at PI Energy to grow solar energy markets, using fundamental innovation, to make clean energy affordable and practical.  

We expect that PI Energy’s technology will change the way people think of where solar energy can be installed.  On the left is a traditional solar PV panel mounted on a metal pole to power  irrigation equipment.   

PI Energy’s technology, (still under development), will allow for  directly placement of the conformally wrapping PV modules onto the equipment, a far more cost-effective approach.  This way, the metal pole, rack, mounting hardware, and extra wiring become unnecessary costs.  There are vast amounts of equipment, used in telecommunications, lighting and irrigation around the world that need remote power solutions.  We are excited about this opportunity.  Surface-integrated solar on to equipment, devices, vehicles and buildings can be far more efficient and cost-effective.    

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The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently issued a brief titled “Investing in a Clean Energy Future: Solar Energy Research, Deployment, and Workforce Priorities.”

The DOE August 2021 brief concluded that simply to meet current decarbonization goals for US electricity generation, the rate of solar deployment in the US “would need to accelerate to three to four times faster than its current rate by 2030”. 

(Sources:  DOE & SEIA)

According to LLNL, electricity generation made up about 37% of US energy consumption in 2019.  So, the DOE stated target for solar PV does not include the majority (63%) of the US energy markets, which are largely powered by fossil fuels, which include most of transportation, building heating & cooling and industrial energy use.   

PI Energy’s addressable markets include all energy markets (electricity, transportation, building heating & cooling, and industrial applications).  

Thank you for helping us advance on the path to a clean energy future by making this campaign a success.   We recently reached another milestone of over $300k in committed funds.    

If you would like to invest more or have not invested yet, we invite you to participate.  Please feel free to tell your friends about PI Energy and our goal:  using  innovation to accelerate  the use of clean energy .

PI Energy and its CEO were featured in an article in Green.org

You can see the article here.

Green.org article on PI Energy

The recently released UN’s IPCC report shows that drastic reductions in CO2 emissions are required to prevent irreversible climate change.   This highlights the importance of developing new renewable energy technologies that can be quickly and globally deployed, like PI Energy’s solar PV technology, to reduce CO₂ emissions.

The recently issued report of 3,949 page, is a preliminary version of the Physical Science Basis report, which details the past, present and future trajectory of earth’s climate.  For reference, here is the 1959-2021 growth trend of CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere:

(Source:  The Keeling Curve, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego)

The IPCC’s Physical Science Basis report states:  that massive and immediate cuts to emissions are required within about 8 years, to avoid a major and irreversible climate change.  The CO₂ chart above shows the opposite current trend of increasing emissions with current market technologies.  Contrary to the current trend, greenhouse gas emissions need to fall substantially by 2029, thus large-scale changes in global energy generation are required.  

The energy markets represent a $8 trillion/year behemoth, which is both a challenge and an opportunity.  The need to transform the long-term emissions trend was a driver for the founding of PI Energy.  We intend to meet this challenge and provide a globally deployable solution.  

We think that this and subsequent reports further will drive unprecedented commitment towards clean energy, including PI Energy.   

Thank you for your interest and support.

PI Energy was founded to accelerate the growth of clean energy with a globally scalable technology.   Extreme weather events this summer remind us of the urgency for a global transition to clean energy.  So, how fast is the world transitioning to clean energy?  

A common misconception in the energy sector is that renewable energy’s contribution is large and that it is well on its way to becoming dominant.   Formerly known as British Petroleum, BP publishes an annual energy report, that includes data on total primary energy consumption and contribution from renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and biofuels).  

(Source:  BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021, pp. 10 & 55)

Total consumed energy and emissions have increased over the past decade, with the notable exception of 2020, where global consumption of transportation fuels decreased due the pandemic.  According to BP, renewable energy today only makes up only about 6% of primary energy consumed globally.  

The current rate of growth for clean energy is insufficient to meaningfully mitigate climate impacts, and without significant changes in the underlying technologies of today’s renewable energy, it could take many decades to reach an energy transition.    

At PI Energy, we think that time is for an energy transition should be fast and global.  With solar energy having by far the largest theoretical potential of all clean energy sources, we are pursuing a globally deployable low-cost solar PV innovation that can greatly expand where solar energy can be deployed.  Our goal is to make solar PV a leading source of energy around the world.  Thank you for coming along with us on our journey.

On August 9^th, 2021, PI Energy was invited, by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Engineering Industrial Innovation and Partnerships, to submit a full proposal for a grant to the Small Business Innovation Research program.  We welcome the opportunity, thank you NSF !

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Thank you for making this campaign a success.   We recently reached another milestone since the launch of the campaign: over $200,000 in committed funds.  Congratulations to all of our community, especially our shareholders and supporters.  

If you would like to invest more or have not invested yet, we invite you to participate.  Please feel free to tell your friends about PI Energy and our goal:  to grow solar energy markets, utilizing fundamental innovation, to make clean energy affordable and practical.

We have expanded our collaborations with outside technical facilities, and we continue to advance our materials processing for our novel P4 solar cell design.  The image above is recent, a prototype sample from July 2021, undergoing electrical testing.  We are enthusiastic with the progress and we look forward to sharing more.

MBA students from University of Washington Foster MBA program looked at some of the addressable markets for PI Energy as their capstone project. This segment focuses on their findings on the unfilled opportunities that exist for two rapidly-expanding markets: data centers and EVs. 

PI Energy is uniquely poised to enter these markets. Check out this video to learn more details.

Here is a photo of a recent PI Energy materials in a sample holder, prepared for a fabrication process step.   The processing was successful.  We were able to repeat the fabrication process across multiple samples.  The device will next be integrated into a working solar PV device for further testing .  

Stay tuned!

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Here’s a picture of some our team at our new facility.  

There was a lot of equipment to set up, and we are happy to report we are fully operational.  

[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].

Hello!

As you might know, Pacific Integrated Energy has exceeded its minimum funding goal. When a company reaches its minimum on StartEngine, it's about to begin withdrawing funds. If you invested in Pacific Integrated Energy be on the lookout for an email that describes more about the disbursement process.

This campaign will continue to accept investments until its indicated closing date.

Thanks for funding the future.

-StartEngine

A promising and unique market for PI Energy’s technology is the electric vehicles market.  We want to address a frequent question:  how far could one drive a car wrapped with PI Energy’s PV technology?

PI Energy – concept installation for solar film

While our technology is still in development and the final performance numbers will require a real-life test, we expect that PI Energy will provide a compelling market solution.  Although there are no current commercial EVs in the market with substantial solar PV, there have been some notable feasibility tests.  In 2019, Toyota announced its participation in road trials of electric vehicles equipped with high efficiency triple junction solar PV modules that covered a limited area of the car, the roof, hood and back window.  This extended the driving range and allowed the vehicle to charge while parked or while driving during the day.  The triple junction solar modules used in the demo test vehicle are extremely expensive, so commercially they are used to power space satellites, where their relative cost is small.  Toyota’s stated results of the demo vehicle were 27.7 miles (44.5 km) per day range extension, which is just over the average daily driving in the US in 2017.  This suggests that a cost-effective PI Energy solution, that can cover more surface area, will be of commercially valuable.   

A big challenge to integrate solar modules on electric vehicles is that most car exteriors are curved surfaces.  In the Toyota test, the solar modules were made up of many smaller articulated modules, so the area actually covered with solar modules in the demo was decreased due to spacing of traditional modules across the vehicle’s curved surfaces.  Notably, the Toyota demo vehicle only had solar modules installed on some top surfaces, leaving a large portion of surfaces free from modules.  

PI Energy’s solar film, with a low-installed cost can be wrapped on a passenger vehicle, enabling harvesting of sunlight across a larger area, including most of the car surface, without covering the windows (which are helpful to see the road).  PI Energy’s technology design allows for capturing off-angle sunlight, extending solar energy collection to the morning and afternoon.  We project that PI Energy’s commercial solar PV materials could provide about 20 miles per day average, in Southern California for a typical electric vehicle, at a market competitive price.  The graph below shows the relative sunlight capture on a traditional solar module demo (left) and PI Energy’s technology (right), where all of the blue surface would be covered by PI Energy’s solar PV material.

Traditional solar module installation versus PI Energy’s EV concept.

The benefit of PI Energy’s technology for passenger EVs is:

1. Competitive cost for installed solar wrap modules.
2. Good performance at high temperatures – this is important as car surfaces warm up in sunlight.
3. Extending the electric vehicle range by to about a typical daily commute.
4. Good off-angle sunlight performance.
5. Charging infrastructure requirements can be substantially reduced.
6. On-board passive daylight charging, with less plug-in fast charging, extends battery life and performance.

Our team at PI Energy is grateful to each of you for helping us launch our Reg CF campaign, so we can bring clean energy to be practical and at a low-installed cost around the world.

Since we launched we raised already over $100,000.  We are just at the start of a new beginning for clean energy.   Please stay tuned for updates on PI Energy and spread the word.   

Thank you for your support for a better future.

Let’s power up the planet!

We put together a new video on the top of the PI Energy page on StartEngine.  https://www.startengine.com/pienergy

The video has animations showing how we are planning future installation of our technology, as well as a description of our path ahead.  It is narrated by some of our board members and founders.  

Despite our limited video production skills, we hope you will enjoy the video.

1).What is the development stage of the Company?  

PI Energy is in pre-commercial technology development-stage, for our next-generation solar cell technology.  As we progress in our development process, we estimate a lowered risk for meeting our technical and manufacturing goals.  The steps to commercialization are: 1.) to complete the development of our P4 solar cell, 2.) initial pilot deployments, and 3.) commercial production and distribution.

We have met with and spoken with over one hundred potential customers and distributors, as well as some large companies for a collaborative for global-scale fabrication and distribution.    The interest has been extensive especially in the new enabling markets and globally to expand solar in underserved and unaddressed markets. Our goal is to advance our technology to a point where we can start some initial pilot and/or test installations.

2) Valuation.

The addressable market includes the current solar PV module market, which comprises the +$46 billion/year in solar module sales, with the potential to expand into the +$2 trillion/year electricity market.  In addition, the potential market includes the new markets where current solar PV modules are not a significant part of the market. This includes the electric vehicle market which we estimate to be about $8.3 billion and growing, along with other areas of transportation, including trains, ships and aircraft.

We are excited to be back after our last successful round. 

We have made good progress on our prototype since then.  Check out our campaign page for the latest information.