Green Wombat

Green Wombat recently sat down with John Langdon of HelioVolt, a thin-film solar company based in Austin, Texas. Thin-film solar promises to be the next big thing in solar technology. At the risk of oversimplifying, the technology prints solar cells on rolls of flexible metal foil. The payoff: relatively inexpensive solar film that could be incorporated into the roofs and walls of homes and office towers and, eventually, even windows so that a skyscraper, for instance, might generate half of the electricity it needs. A passel of thin-film startups are racing to be first to market, including Silicon Valley’s Miasole, Innovalight and Nanosolar, which the San Jose Mercury News’ Katherine Conrad reports today, will open one of the world’s largest solar cell manufacturing plants in South San Jose by mid-2007.

Given that most of the companies use basically the same underlying technology, the key is how quickly and cheaply they can manufacture thin-film solar. HelioVolt exec Langdon contends that’s where his company has the edge with FASST (Field Assisted
Simultaneous Synthesis and Transfer), its patented nanotechnology printing process. Without going into the technical details, FASST allows solar cells to be printed directly on metal, glass and other building materials. "We can turn a knob and make different form factors" on the fly, says Langdon, HelioVolt’s marketing vp and a Texas Instruments veteran. "We use less energy and have less inventory. When you have a plant that costs $50 million, it all comes down to how many units you can make at what cost."

The five-year-old company plans to break ground on a manufacturing plant next year and begin shipping products by late 2008. As interesting as its manufacturing process is the company’s distribution strategy and take on the market.

Langdon says HelioVolt will capitalize on the building materials industry’s existing infrastructure to distribute thin-film solar. While the initial market will be for retrofitting existing homes with solar film, he says the real opportunity lies in incorporating the technology into roofing, windows and other building materials already sold through Home Depot and other outlets. "It’s such a huge market and distribution channel," says Langdon. It’s no accident that the CEO of Builder Homesite, a consortium of the nation’s 36 largest home construction companies, sits on HelioVolt’s board.

Beyond the technological challenges of producing thin-film solar is the regulatory one, according to Langdon. The current demand for residential and commercial solar panels is determined by a hodge podge of state and federal subsidies and policies that make the price of installing solar highly variable. For instance, in Silicon Valley there can be a huge range in just the fees individual cities charges for installation permits. "It’s difficult to sell a product nationally without uniform standards," Langdon says.