Cyrium snags funding, aims for 45% efficient solar
Ottawa-based Cyrium Technologies doesn’t get much coverage, but the company is quietly making inroads with its nanotech-boosted triple junction solar cells, which are made of layers of gallium arsenide and other group III and IV compounds on a germanium substrate. The company reportedly uses quantum dot technology to get higher conversion efficiencies, according to an article last year in Photon International magazine. The cells, which are being targeted at concentrated solar PV companies, are capable of achieving 45 per cent efficiency under a concentration of 300 suns.
Their initial market: improving the solar power capability of satellites, which are increasingly becoming energy hogs up in space. But land-based applications are also being targeted.
The company announced yesterday that it has raised more money — though it wouldn’t say exactly how much — in a follow-up round. It did say that to date it has raised $5.5 million (Canadian) from investors that include Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, Pangaea Ventures Ltd. and BDC Venture Capital. Since they raised about $3 million before (at least that’s all I’ve heard about so far), then I assume today’s announcement involves a $2.5 million follow-on.
Solar companies claiming breakthrough in cell efficiency may be a dime-a-dozen, but perhaps it’s the quietest ones in the sea of voices that actually deliver on promises. Who knows?
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
December 4th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Wow. A 45% efficiency would revolutionise building-integrated PV design. At current efficiencies, most roof-mounted systems are little more than symbolic, rarely worth the effort/expense. But if you triple output, that changes the equation dramatically. I’ll assume cost is the main obstacle, but any word on why they’re not (yet) tackling the domestic or conventional markets?
December 5th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Aiming for 45 % conversion is stretching it, when Spectrolab can only get to 40.7 %. It’s very unlikely they will be able to get up equal to Spectrolab in under 3 years. I’ve never seen anything in the quantum dot/photovoltaic literature that has actually boosted a bulk cell’s efficiency by up or down conversion.
$5.5 million is barely enough money to operate a molecular beam epitaxy machine for a few years in a corporate environment. If these guys are using one of the research machines at the NRC then this clearly isn’t a manufacturing operation, but a R&D one. That’s ok, but scaling up would be slow, since any ultra-high vacuum system is going to have a couple years of bugs to work through.
In any event, such cells are generally aimed at the space market, not roof-tops. They are quite expensive.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
James,
These multi-junction PVs are way more expensive than normal PV. Other than space applications they only become cost effective when you put them in systems using solar concentrators (mirrors or lenses, and sun tracking system) to focus very strong beams of sunlight on them.
SolFocus (SolFocus.com) is one interesting technology that might make these high efficiency cells more suitable for terrestrial applications. Though it still requires tracking the sun, so probably not residential.