Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 295 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. The Alberta government recently froze the development of new wind and solar projects in part because rural communities are concerned about taking, quote, unquote, prime farming land out of production. What if there was a way to combine solar farms and farming? Agrivoltaics is still a relative is still relatively new, but agrivoltaics of agrivoltaic sold, sites in the United States, most of which involve sheep grazing or pollinator habitat.
Markham:Today's guest, Paul Worley of Ascent Solar Technologies, thinks that thin thin film solar could be a big part of the agrivoltaic approach in the future. Welcome to the interview, Paul.
Paul:Thank you for having me, Markham, and we look forward to talking about agrivoltaics.
Markham:Well, me too, because I have to tell you, the 7 month pause in wind and solar development in Alberta was highly controversial as you can imagine. And the the irony here, for folks who aren't familiar with what happened, is that the, the premier of Alberta, who, Danielle Smith, claimed when she paused it back in August that she had done it at the behest of the Alberta Utilities Commission amongst others. That's the regulator. And the regulator really their report was released in February, and they said, no. There was no need there was no need to do a pause.
Markham:There was no we could've figured out all this stuff with the existing processes and so on. So it was why the the pause was widely seen as just being very anti renewables, and a lot of rural people were concerned about, you know, in their words, taking prime farmland out of out of production, and agrivoltaics seems to be the answer to that concern. But let's talk, first of all, about thin film solar. What the heck is that?
Paul:Okay. It's basically so our product is compared to a panel. Our product is about 1 80th the weight. Okay. So which is very important with agrivoltaics, and I would define agrivoltaics in 2 categories.
Paul:There's agrivoltaics with a panel. K. So normally, a panel would be a couple feet above the ground, you know, slanted at whatever angle best suits the sun. K? And agrivoltaics with a panel, what you do is you just spread the panels out.
Paul:But you still lose somewhere between 40 and 70% of your farm production. Okay? Just because the sun doesn't get to the crops underneath the panels And, nor does water get into the underneath the panels. So what our product does, it's approximately 12 to 13 inches, wide, and we hang it anywhere from 15 to 22 feet above the ground. And it's slanted, so the water runs off of it and it spread It can, you know, you spread it out anywhere from, you know, 1 and a half to call it 3 feet.
Paul:And what happens is you get you you get the sun, the sun still hits the plants. You also the re you can hang it that high. You can't hang a very heavy solar panel that high because any type of wind makes creates a sale and then pulls it off of the mount. So and then water runs off our panel and into the ground. It also acts as a cooling, and so they don't need as much water.
Paul:So the water's kinda trapped. So you you your water water usage falls 15 to 20%. Crop, the crop production, you'll lose somewhere between 3 12%, depending how far you wanna spread the the, I'm not gonna use our panels, but spread our sheets. And and the beauty about it is ours too, it you you it's it's high enough to run all the farm equipment. That's key.
Paul:Now it's really more designed for, I would call it, specialty crops and in areas where where there's high power and or and or high water costs. Because what you're doing is you're offsetting water usage that low that lowers the cost there, and you're offsetting, on higher power rates. So, that's kind of it. We can go into a little bit more detail back later.
Markham:Right. I've yeah. Now you, you had a, swath of your, thin film,
Paul:Right.
Markham:Just a moment ago on camera. Of course, our, listeners can't can't see that, but it looked to me almost like a big strip of film. Old old timey, camera film.
Paul:It's the old and it's about a little tiny bit thicker than copy paper.
Markham:And what is the the the average efficiency I understand of a solar panel now is in the 22, 23 percent range. What's the efficiency of, of of your product?
Paul:We like to look at it. I the we're we're getting to we're we're getting to the efficiency of, like, 16 and a half 16 to 16 and a half. There's a fundamental difference, though, because our panel will absorb more light in the, like, the nonpeak hours. Okay? Because we we any kind of light coming in will produce power.
Paul:So it's really you gotta look at it as as, how much watts do you produce? Because, you know, when direct sun in a direct sun, call it 3 to 3 and a half hours, the solar panels producing that. And let's just call that from 11 to 3. But from 10 to 11, it may only be producing 15 watts. And then the hour before that, it's only producing 11, whereas ours will be producing closer to, you know, call it 15 versus 16a half.
Markham:So they the the panel the panel and the film just work work differently. They work differently. Characteristics, and that makes the economics different.
Paul:Correct. Right. And ours is old ours is going to be clearly gonna be more expensive than panels. Okay? And it's not gonna put off quite as much power over over a peer you know, over a day period.
Paul:But you still have all the re you still have, you know, 90 plus percent of the revenue coming off the crops, which on under a normal panel, you'd probably have anywhere from, you know, 40 to 50% of the revenue coming off the panels.
Markham:So does the comb the combination of the, lower generation of electricity, but still being able to maintain a crop on the on the land, does that change the economics in favor of thin film?
Paul:It should. Yes. The other thing that and and this is, the other issue you're dealing with is is my product's more more suitable for smaller farms. Okay? But on a large in a large farm out in the middle of nowhere, you can't the infrastructure doesn't support a large solar farm in a lot of cases.
Paul:Sure. If you're you're you're closer to a city and all that and have a connection point, you know, you could do that. But, a lot of times out in the middle of nowhere, your solar farm will produce more power than can be used. So ours are designed for small farms, and it'll, you know, it'll take care of the house and some of the, peripheral stuff in the barn and chart if you had a start charging in the new electric, farm equipment and that, that type of thing. Or you have to charge batteries that you don't charge the equipment
Markham:overnight. So what is there a well, I know there's a levelized cost of energy estimate for thin film because I see it on Lazard's table all the time. I just I haven't checked it for a while, so I can't I don't have the the the numbers at my fingertips. But if you know, did you know what the comparison of the levelized cost of energy between a panel and thin film?
Paul:I don't.
Markham:Not a problem.
Paul:Because we really don't compete in that. Yeah.
Markham:So it's a different market, really?
Paul:It's really a different market. Like, I'll I'll I'll make this statement, Mark. You know, in the next 5, just 10 years, you're probably not gonna see my product sitting over a 50 you know, a a 1000 acre corn farm or a 1000 acre cotton farm or a 1000 acre soybean farm. That that just is the you know, that that could be 8 to 10 years out, but it's not gonna be in the next 5 to 6 years.
Markham:Okay. Well, let you know, fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, one of the things that's become clear, I think, over the last year or 2 is that even within the the clean energy space, so we're talking, you know, solar and wind and maybe some now geothermal is making a bit of a push, we'll see more of that, on and on and on. It's the diversity of the technologies.
Markham:You know, you see it on the storage side. We started out, all we had was lithium ion with, you know, NMC, and now we're getting sodium we're getting lithium, lithium iron phosphate, we're getting sodium iron, ion, and zinc ion, and iron ion, and redox batteries, and all of that's and they all have their niche. They all have a specific application, that they do better than the competition. And it sounds like in the solar generation technology space, there's beginning to be that kind of innovation and differentiation. Is that a fair way to look at it?
Paul:Yes. Yes. We we we applied for a grant. We went through the, the process of applying, then we got accepted to make a bid, and we're waiting on the DOE. That'll be very that that's gonna change things.
Paul:We're doing it on a, a small vineyard in California.
Markham:Yeah. I wanna talk about the DOE in just a moment because, you know, we pay a lot of attention to Jigger Shaw. We've had some of his folks on the various podcast episodes. And what the DOE is doing is to from the from a Canadian point of view, where we don't have an equivalent. Like, there is no Jigger Shaw running around Canada evangelizing for for clean energy technologies, and and and certainly not one that has a big pot of money like Jigger does.
Markham:You know? Like, he can make a he can make a difference, but with a with a a signature in his office, he can make a big difference, in some of these spaces. But what before we get there, I wanna talk about the the the technology because one of the things that's become clear is that China has scaled up its solar panel module production so great. And and and these figures come from Wood Mackenzie, But, you know, they're now making panels at, like, 11¢ a watt. And the Europeans, apparently make them for 22¢ a watt, and the United States manufacturers its 40¢ a watt.
Markham:Well, the chances are China's won that race. It's but the one thing that that the US does and will do in the foreseeable future is innovate. It is an innovation machine, and so here's the here's the question.
Paul:Okay. Our products like you're coming on the US, but go ahead.
Markham:Our our products like yours, our technologies like yours, part of an innovation response to China's scaled up low cost response?
Paul:Yeah. I I hope so because we are also on another DOE DOE project. And until that's announced, they gotta be very careful in confidentiality reasons, but that could change, that could change a lot of things in the US. But US panels, though, there's they're really going after the thin it's not it's called thin solar. It's about, you know, 20%.
Paul:I'm sorry. 70 or 80% wider than the Chinese stuff. It's also produced they they use 90% less power than the Chinese do. So it also produces more power for a longer period of time. So I I've not I can't I don't wanna quote anymore.
Paul:I used to know a lot about that. And I can't say that I'm an expert on it now. But, that 40¢ a watt seems to be a little high with with our with the new panels the US is producing. But Sure.
Markham:Fair fair enough. And and I think WoodMac, was looking at the industry as a whole, and, you know, that would be an average. And so there's probably, plenty of firms that are under that under that average. But it it it sounds like, you know, my my hypothesis as it is, is kind of correct that that the Americans, you guys are doing things better, smarter, you know, pushing the envelope in some areas, that the Chinese are not. They're basically a blunt instrument.
Markham:Right? I mean, they just have these huge factories, and that's great because there there are places in emerging economies like Africa and Latin America, where that's a India, that's a terrific application. Asia. Yeah. Yeah.
Markham:Just build them out as, you know, you got you got plenty of land, and just build out those big solar farms and then and away you go. But you get into a more sophisticated, I don't know if that's the right word, but we'll use it anyway. Sophisticated economy like United States, maybe Canada, the EU, you can see where some of these more niche products like yours could get a foothold in the market.
Paul:I yes. I hope so. I would agree with that statement. Yes.
Markham:Okay. Well, what, one of the things that, caught my attention was your company thinks that the thin film, actually stands up to harsh weather better than a than a panel. Could you explain that?
Paul:Correct. Two different things. If you were to go to our website, you can look. We did some, the 3 or 4 different services of of DOD bought our product. Special forces, steels, and I think navy used our product.
Paul:And, you know, they they they didn't believe that if it had a hole in it, it would still work. So they would shoot our film with a gun. Okay. And they punch a hole in it. And so what happens is and I know the viewers can't see this.
Paul:There would be the hole, but the power goes around the hole. And so if the hole only damaged 3% of the panel, then my that that that's the only paint that's the only power you lose would be the 3%. Whereas if it's a silicon based panel panel, you lose you typically would lose a lot more of the entire panel. The other thing is hail. So, like, you know, every other week, you read about a hailstorm taken out, you know, 50 megawatts of solar.
Paul:K? So that's that. And 2, one of the other characteristics of ours is I think I touched on it briefly. If you were to hang a panel 22 feet above a, the crops, okay, you you would still have to spread it out. You would still lose a lot more crop, crop production, but you could probably get it down, I'm guessing, 20 to 30% reduction.
Paul:But then any type of wind when I say any type of wind, probably any above 25 or 30 miles an hour could just rip it out because it's heavy. You'd have to have a lot more supports to keep it in. So it would be, you know, 3 or 4 times as costly to install. And so hours, because it's spread out, it's very lightweight, it would be mounted on a thin piece of any kind of steel, zinc, whatever you wanna put it on. And it the wind just kinda goes through it, so it's not affected as much by wind.
Markham:So when you're talking to customers, how much does more extreme weather and the increase in that extreme weather as climate change, intensifies, how how much does that play into the discussion?
Paul:So the half a dozen people we've had conversations with are typically located along a coast. Okay. Where, you know, they would have to pay to help us design a product that would that would withstand a cat 4 or 5 hurricane or tropical storm or whatever you wanna call it. But the issue there is some coastal areas, especially in, the far east, you know, they they'll have a a decent size hurricane hit them every, you know, 2 or 3 years. And what happens if they have solar, they had to redo the whole solar.
Paul:So if you're redoing the entire solar project again, then, you know, our ours would be very, very cost effective. The other areas are we were talking as, a group down in Argentina or in Peru. And the weather there, there's constant winds. And so they're doing something. They're doing an experiment with some Chinese panels, and then we're hoping they can go come back to us and try us.
Paul:But, you know, they have an entire engineering staff and everything else, so we we go if they were to come back, we could come up with a solution. But they have 20 to 30 mile an hour winds, basically, you know, maybe not every day, but many days. And then they have gusts that go up to 60 to 80 miles. And so his concern and they have a bit of hail. So his concern but he already had the other panels coming.
Paul:His concern is the weather would either pull the panels off or the hail would destroy the, the panels themselves. So that's that. The other the Chinese have a product, I would say, that's similar to them. It's it's flexible, but it's still a crystalline structure. So they still have so many issues with weather.
Paul:And if you ask for an order, they'll tell you we'll we'll send it when we get up to mass production. So I don't I you know, that that's what we're seeing out of China.
Markham:Well, let's talk let's talk about that. Is your factory in the United States, and, where are you at in the scale up process?
Paul:So we're we should, I mean, we have produced and can produce, you know, 4 and a half to 6 megawatts a year. It's not a ton, but it's, that we we we're there. We've and, yes, I have a full facility right outside of Denver and Thornton, Colorado.
Markham:Okay. So, what are your plans over the next 2 to 5 years? Are you are you hoping to add additional factories, expand the one you've got? What
Paul:I would say, most likely, if we lie in some big customers, I would put the factory closer to them. Okay? So that would be 1. It you know, we we would plan on expanding in general, but we kinda we we've gotta, and that that we'll get back to I'll get back to this in a second when I, took but but we we our plans would expand, you know, as as orders come in. That's the best way to phrase it.
Paul:You know, I I came into the company in December of 2022 as the CFO, and then I was, I was made to CEO in late April of 2023. And when I did when I came to the CEO, I basically said this company had it was started, you know, 2,005, 6, and they'd only hit, 10.5, 10.6 efficiency. K? Never broke that. So I sat the team down and said, hey.
Paul:You know, we in order to to be competitive in agrivoltaics and space, space has, is growing rapidly. So what we have to be in that, you know, 16 to 17% efficiency. Because in space, we actually we don't have much degradation in space, but that's an advantage because they look at the end of life power. So if you start off at 20 and drop to 12, that's great. But if you start off at 16 and drop to 55, it you you're better off at the end of the life.
Paul:So, anyway, so the team responded. We got to 177 efficiency, and now we're producing. You know, that's by cell. Now we've got, producing modules. We're, you know, we're up into the, mid fourteens.
Markham:What what kind of materials, are used, in your, thin film? And, because, of course, you know, everybody these days, when you talk about the energy transition, clean energy technology, you're talking about critical minerals and shortages and, you know, and problem. And then there are are, you know, ethical and labor problems with in some of the countries, that are supplying those minerals. So what kind of mineral what kind of materials have you got in your product?
Paul:Gallium, arsenide, copper, silver. Oh, there's, like, 4, 5 others. But the only one I would say, we use such a little amount, but if you if you read around, gallium can be an issue, but we use such a small amount of that. It hasn't never been it's not an issue for us.
Markham:Gotcha. So, let's talk about the Department of Energy. I you know, looking at it from afar, what what have we seen over the last you know, since the infrastructure act in 2021? You know, you got that. You got the chips act.
Markham:You got the Defense Act. You've got the Inflation Reduction Act. I mean, there's just so much money being pumped into this, you know, sort of the clean energy sector, and the Department of Energy is at the at the head of all of that. And and people like Jigar Shah are having a huge, role in how the US responds to the competitive threat from China and for and and also, to some extent, from the EU. So where do you fit in?
Markham:How, you know, how are you working with the DOE?
Paul:We've applied for several grants with the DOE, and I would say that would be the extent. If, you know, if somebody did decide to buy or wanted to buy our product to do it, we would qualify for, some of the tax grants and and or and and or tax, savings associated with solar. But, that's kind of the extent. You know, DOD just came up with a new program for grants and loan packages too. So they were just allocated some of the same money.
Markham:So That's the Department of Defense.
Paul:Yes. Department of Defense. Yeah. I know I know Canada has one of those.
Markham:I can guarantee you it's it's a, very small percentage of the American version.
Paul:Yeah. I know.
Markham:And of course, the American you know, the American military is, famous or infamous, however you wanna look at it, you know, for supporting early stage science and, technologies that show promise, for their purposes. So it it makes perfect sense that they would be interested in, you know, sources of electricity, you know, in remote locations where they might be operating.
Paul:Yep. Yep. And I I was in the army for over 10 years. So Yep.
Markham:So you know. What are the applications in an urban environment, Paul? Or are there any?
Paul:Eventually, we would get to roof drops would be a primary, area. That would be first, second. Technically, you sold my material. I could wrap a building. But that that requires a lot a lot of engineering because my part is simple.
Paul:It'll wrap. It'll go around corners. It'll do all that, but it's connecting it into the the infrastructure of the building. So it's producing power that's then connected into the infrastructure of the building. That's the engineering.
Markham:Can I can I slap it on my roof easily, or is it more difficult than a
Paul:standard panel? You could. Like you said, I mean, what I showed you was probably a a a theatrical dual panel and a and a, you know, it weighs 1 80th or 1 100th of that. So, yes, you could install it and you can walk on it, which is unique, because that won't damage it.
Markham:Oh, interesting. We put it on a road or put it on a sidewalk or something like that.
Paul:Go that far. But, there has the I I think the Israelis came up with, one that you can install, but it does not it doesn't produce a whole lot of power from what I what I read. But Yeah.
Markham:Yeah. Sure. Sure. Look, Paul, thank you very much for this. Really appreciate it.
Markham:You've given us an insight into a, a niche in the solar industry that, I see as I mentioned, I see it in Lazard, but didn't really know what it was. And Now I have a little better idea. Thank you very much for that.
Paul:Well, thank you. I enjoyed the interview. I appreciate it.