2022-Korea-Showcase-Swift-Solar

SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING KOREAN]

JOEL JEAN: OK, can everyone hear me in the back? Yeah, OK, great. Yeah, my name is Joel Jean, I'm the co-founder and CEO of SWIFT solar.

So our ties to MIT run very deep-- I grew up as a scientist at MIT. I did my master's and my PhD in electrical engineering there. One of our advisors is a professor at MIT, Vladimir Bulovic. Three of our co-founders actually were researchers at MIT working in solar cells.

So we actually spun out the company from MIT, from Stanford, and from the National Renewable Energy Lab in the US-- NREL. And so it's a joint spin-out-- we have exclusive IP licensed from all three institutions. And we are working on more powerful solar cells.

Let's see if this moves.

All right, so the world is fundamentally relying on solar power to fight climate change. So we expect energy system models-- expect that up to 50% or more of future energy is going to come from solar. So solar is the future of energy, in a way. But today's leading solar technology is over 60 years old.

It's over 60 years old, and it's actually running into its fundamental limits-- thermodynamic limits. So we believe that it's time for something new and something better.

So that something better could be perovskites. So perovskites are a new kind of semiconductor, it's a synthetic semiconductor. The perovskite refers to the crystal structure, which is actually a naturally occurring calcium titanate, but we make a made perovskite.

So this is the crystal structure shown here. The blue part is the top cell. And we actually make a stacked, two-cell stack, called a tandem. And the top cell absorbs high energy lights, blue, blue and UV light, and some green. The bottom cell absorbs more red near-infrared light, lower energy light.

And when you have two cells, two materials that are absorbing different parts of the solar spectrum, you end up being able to optimize, and getting a higher efficiency limit than one cell alone.

So the one thing to take away from this is that over many, many years, and over the last two decades, we've seen many solar companies come and go. But none of them have been able to check both of the main boxes that are critical for solar technology-- efficiency and cost.

So you want something that can be very, very efficient, and something that can be very, very cheap, right? If you want to have low cost solar energy. So we've seen a lot of technologies-- silicon is already very efficient and very, very cheap. You could go farther.

But things like III-V multi-junctions, cadmium telluride, CIGS, all of these technologies, all the startups that came and went, were not able to check both of these boxes. And we do finally have a chance for the first time in history to have a technology that can actually surpass silicon in both cost and in efficiency.

So here's the physics. Here's the actual data. So silicon has been around for over 60 years, the technology was developed at Bell Labs, about 6% efficient in 1954. And over those last 65 years, has been improving steadily-- about half a percent a year.

But it is running up into this fundamental limit of around 30%, and that's the thermodynamic limit for any kind of solar cell that's just a single cell. About 30% Shockley-Queisser limit, is what is called.

So the data here in red is for perovskites-- these are data points from Swift Solar, from our company. And you can see that the key advance here is that it allows us to push the theoretical limit up from about 30% to 46%. So it's a pretty substantial boost in the potential of the technology.

And my co-founders have been some of the earliest people in the field, developed the very first world record perovskite tandems-- perovskite on perovskite, as well as perovskite on silicon. So two of the leading kinds of long-term potential solar cell technology. So we've been able to advance this steadily over the last decade, and are now surpassing the best in class for silicon technology.

So how do we use that technology? There's a lot of different ways. So early on, our technology, it's very hard to say if it will last 25 years in the field. That's the main challenge with any new technology, is making sure that it can last for long times in field conditions. The technology has only been around for 10 years, so hard to know if it'll last 25 years. But a watch doesn't have to last 25 years.

So here here's an example of a ring-shaped solar cell around a watch. And you can double the solar power output that you actually get from this device. You can maybe double the battery life if you spend a lot of time outdoors.

Another example-- low-Earth orbit satellites. So we know that satellites are growing massively in low-Earth orbit-- we're seeing a lot of constellations getting put up by SpaceX or by Amazon, OneWeb, many other companies. And with these satellites, the only power source really available is solar.

So they need something that's very efficient, lightweight, and actually affordable. So traditional space solar is very, very expensive-- $300 or $400 per watt. So that's hundreds of times more expensive than terrestrial, ground-based solar. So what we can do is drop the ray cost for solar rays on satellites by a factor of 10 or more, while still keeping the radiation tolerance, and keeping the high efficiency and lightweight of traditional space solar.

Another example-- this is my favorite, personally-- light duty electric vehicles. So if you're a driver of an EV, you know that plugging in and range anxiety is a big thing. What you can do, if you have very efficient solar, very efficient cars, is actually reduce the number of times you have to plug in, if you charge outdoors.

So this may not be as relevant in Korea, in Seoul, if you're parking underground or shaded, but in California, where our company is based, you could actually get up to six months without charging, without plugging in, to charge your car, if you park outdoors. So that's a substantial gain from having to plug in, let's say, every week, or even every day, in some cases.

So that's quite compelling for drivers and for grid operators.

So here's an example of a solar panel that we've made a prototype, of a perovskite tandem. You can see it just looks like a dark panel. You can imagine the curvature fitting the top of your car, and you can charge your car using this kind of product.

Of course, all the traditional applications like rooftop solar, and rooftop and ground mount, you can also power with our technology. These need to last very long times, they need to be very, very cheap. They also need to be very efficient. So it's a high bar.

So that's why we are looking at a lot of alternative applications. But here, you could boost this solar output from your house, from your rooftop, and actually reduce the cost of the electricity coming out.

So that is the direction that we're headed long term, that is where the carbon emissions reductions primarily lie-- rooftop and utility scale solar, as well. So anywhere where you're putting solar today, you want something that's more efficient, you want it cheaper, that's where we're headed.

So right now, we're a company of about 30 people, we're raising our series A. We have developed the technology to the point where we're getting ready to scale-- we have a small pilot line in California, in the Bay Area. We are looking over the next few years to prove out the manufacturing process, get to the point where we can build our first factory.

We are working with customers and suppliers and partners across all of these different verticals that I just talked about-- consumer electronics, auto, aerospace, and traditional solar.

So we're excited to be here talking to all of you. We'll be over at the exhibit. I'm here with my colleagues, Diana Nielsen, head of BD, in the back, and Hyunjong Lee, our process engineer. So yeah, again, thank you very much. And hope to talk to you all soon.

[APPLAUSE]