8/14/2019 Can a solar cellSolar Crash Survivor Succeed After
All_ _ MIT Technology Review.pdf
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y Kevin Bullis on November 1, 2013
Solar Survivor Has High Hopes
By making silicon wafers cheaper, 1366 hopes to ride the next
boom in solarower.
you believe Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, one
reason his company survived when so
any other solar startups have tanked in recent years is sitting
in the middle of the companys meeting
oom. We got this for $200, he says, pointing to a neatly
constructed but obviously homemade
onference table. My son made it.
is companys parsimonious culture mightve helped it outlast more
spendthrift companies like
olyndra, but van Mierlo admits that 1366 was also lucky. The
venture-capital-driven clean-energy
pending spree that started in 2006 resulted mostly in bad
newsbankruptcies, acquisitions for
ennies on the dollar, and money-losing IPOswhen silicon became
so cheap that more expensive new
aterials and thin-film technologies quickly became unviable.
1366 was fortunate that its technology
dnt compete directly with low-cost silicon solar cells, and it
was still working on it when the bottom
ell out of the solar market. A sharp drop in solar prices raised
the bar for new technologies, demanding
ven lower costs or higher performance.
Other companies scaled just in time to see the prices collapse
by a factor of five, van Mierlo says.
They built the wrong factory for the wrong era, and became
roadkill.
366 was in a position to keep working on its technology until it
could compete, without the financial
ability of a large new factory. And now, as the solar market
shows signs of recovering, the company
opes the time is right to start selling a new, cheaper kind of
silicon wafer to makers of solar cells.
ven if 1366 is successful, it wont necessarily open the
floodgates to new funding for innovative solar
ompanies. Matthew Nordan, a vice president at the venture
capital firm Venrock, says for ventureapitalists to start betting
heavily on solar startups again would require a wildly profitable
IPO from
366and a few more similar success stories. But success for 1366
could encourage clean energy
vestors to give new technologies a closer look.
he company still faces major challenges. It needs to invest in
manufacturing shrewdly, increase
roduction rates by about four times to bring down costs per
wafer, and will have to fend off
ompetition from a new generation of leaner solar startups.
ut the early signs are promising. 1366 raised $15 million this
month to bring total investments to $100
Solar Crash Survivor Succeed After All? | MIT Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520831/a-solar-survivor-
04/11/20
