Lighting up energy harvesting

Producing products that harvest the energy from light indoors and outside has given SolarPrint an edge, writes OLIVE KEOGH

IT MAY BE under four years old, but fledgling energy company, SolarPrint, is already mixing with the big boys.

Analog Devices, Schneider Electric and EnOcean have all been wooed by its ultra smart solar cell technology and have become application partners. There is no big secret as to how this was achieved. Persistent knocking on doors according to company co-founder, Roy Horgan.

“There is no easy way to develop a business, especially with an emerging technology,” he says. “It’s about being relentless in pursuit of a customer until you either get a hearing and traction or you walk away because you’re wasting your time. It’s a roller coaster.”

SolarPrint was founded in 2008 by Dr Mazhar Bari, Andre Fernon and Roy Horgan to develop Dye-Sensitised Solar Cells (DSSC) – a third-generation printable solar cell technology that can be produced using cheap raw materials at a competitive cost.

The company’s technology converts light from any source into energy and has a number of potential applications including consumer electronic and wireless devices.

SolarPrint’s immediate focus is integrating its DSSC with wireless sensors to harvest energy in buildings. “Some 96 per cent of buildings have no energy controls and buildings account for about 40 per cent of overall energy consumption,” explains Horgan. “A sensor monitored building will reduce energy usage by as much as 50 per cent. Wireless sensors are a natural way to control and monitor energy usage. We make the sensors self powered (no need to change batteries), no maintenance and a network can be installed and commissioned in minutes. It’s very like the Intel model in that it allows applications to process more data and enable new solutions.”

Horgan left private banking in 2007 with a mission to find a leading edge technology that could be built into a successful company with global reach.

Through a friend he met experimental physicist, Dr Mazhar Bari, an expert in nano materials, thin film device fabrication and device physics. The third founder, Andre Fernon, worked as a financial analyst with Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division before moving into private equity.

“We looked at a number of technologies but DSSC seemed to have the greatest potential,” Horgan says. “We firmly believed that if the technology could be scaled and commercialised, it would have a major impact as the range of applications it could enable were vast. A recent report from Pike Research says the deployment of energy harvesting will grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 38 per cent over the next few years. This will translate into worldwide annual revenue from energy harvesting enabled devices of $9.5 billion by 2015.”

While SolarPrint’s current focus is energy harvesting for buildings, it is also exploring opportunities in other industries. It is working with Fiat on an electric vehicles project and has looked at a potential military application that would replace the heavy battery packs currently carried by soldiers with light wireless devices. “The type of work we are doing with Fiat, for example, involves a very long adoption cycle – up to seven years. No investor is going to wait that long. You need other things on the go,” Horgan says.

Nor is ground breaking technology enough in itself. “A good idea is only part of the puzzle,” Horgan adds. “You also need belief and conviction as a team, your own money and the financial support of others to seed the company and build the first prototypes.”

SolarPrint raised €1.7 million in 2009 to launch the company. Most of that was spent on hiring the team, locking down the supply chain and investing in equipment and facilities. The total investment to date has since reached around €4 million. The company currently employs 17 people and manufactures its product at Sandyford in Dublin.

“We are very fortunate that our business (relative to our competitors) is not capital intensive,” Horgan says. “In the early days no money came in as we were building the team, our knowledge, and fitting out production. We were very lucky in winning a number of EU partnership programmes that contributed to related core RD and also assisted us in establishing a number of strategic relationships with commercial and academic organisations.

“Management of cash runway is paramount to the success of any start-up. Generically with any start-up, milestones that are realistic and achievable need to be set and articulated to investors. These milestones need to add value to the business. If the milestones are achieved or exceeded investors will continue to support the management team. If they are not then the management team should be accountable.”

While there is no shortage of companies in the solar energy space, SolarPrint does not compete directly with most of them as its technology operates inside and outdoors and is particularly effective in diffuse and ambient light conditions.

“Our distinct competitive advantage is indoors and as such we don’t see ourselves as a solar company. Rather we are an energy harvesting company that competes against wires and batteries,” Horgan says. “The companies we are a threat to are traditional energy insensitive silicon solar cell manufacturers using expensive processes such as vacuum processing and battery manufacturers developing disposable batteries.”

SolarPrint is still an early stage company but it is already generating revenue. Break-even should come in 2013 which is ahead of the typical five-seven year cycle in hi-tech hardware. The company has had enquires from over 100 wireless application developers worldwide and has shipped product to over 35 companies many of which are Goliaths compared with SolarPrint.

“Our product trials confirm that we either outperform or significantly outperform any other indoor light energy harvesting technology that currently exists,” Horgan says. “Our product allows customers to add performance and processing power and enables new and more complex applications. All we are doing now is refining the specification by making it even smaller and more powerful.”

Our distinct competitive advantage is indoors and as such we don’t see ourselves as a solar company