By Aaron Thurlow, Caelux
In the 1990s the solar industry started connecting solar modules to the utility grid – early markets included Japan, California and Germany before taking off in the mid-2000s. Global growth of solar has been incredible over the past few decades – greater than 1000x. This is a significant beginning for an industry that is just starting to make impactful inroads in becoming a major source of power generation globally. Last year in the US solar power added more power to the country’s grid than any single source in the past two decades. This trend is similar in multiple regions now: China, India, Europe, and parts of the Middle East.
And while technology has been important in the advancement of the industry one could argue that most of the growth has been driven by cost reductions and the scale-up of solar cell (photovoltaic) technologies that were developed decades earlier. The actual technological improvements have been very incremental in comparison to the cost reductions that have occurred. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that in power generation cost is the main driver. As the solar industry matured, market expansion has been driven by LCOE (levelized cost of electricity) and the lowest LCOE usually wins. This has meant that even though new technologies deliver higher efficiencies they have not been able to come down the cost curve to compete with older technologies. A large part of this is due to scale.
One solar cell technology example is HJT (Heterojunction technology). The technology offers higher efficiencies by combining a thin amorphous silicon layer on top of a silicon solar cell. Today within the industry there is a lot of chatter and momentum for HJT to emerge as the next mainstream technology following TOPCon. The reality is that this technology was first developed nearly 50 years ago and many of the patents were initially filed in the early 1990s by Sanyo who brought the technology to market in 1997. The reason it is now positioned and talked about as being next is that the cost structure is finally approaching a level that will allow the technology to be viable on a large-scale basis. And while the technology has been used commercially for more than two decades, mainly in residential solar applications, its overall market share has been very small due not being able to compete on cost.
Over the past 50 years, the industry has largely seen incremental improvements in solar cell efficiencies rather than step-function improvements. Where these improvements have happened in the past, the technologies have either been relegated to niche markets over the long-haul or have ultimately failed.
Around fifteen years ago a new photovoltaic technology category entered the scene: perovskites. The technology has climbed the solar efficiency learning curve at a faster pace than other technologies from about 3% in 2009 to >26% in 2024. The reason for the rapid climb is largely due to the crystalline structure’s ability to absorb light coupled with the vast number of researchers working globally on the technology. Caelux® is considered one of the global leaders in this research. As a dialogue within the industry, perovskites have been spoken about with high hopes at conferences over the past several years with seemingly equal supporters and naysayers.
At Caelux, we are making perovskite technology a reality — there are three reasons why the Caelux Active Glass approach will follow a different path in bringing a step-function improvement to solar:
- Competes on cost
- Is a scalable solution
- Accelerates the trajectory of solar
Competing on Cost and Why it Matters for Technology Adoption
Nearly all improvements in solar cell technology that have delivered an increase in efficiency over the past few decades have come with a corresponding increase in cost.
New tech generally comes out in lower volumes and has to scale to achieve lower costs. In solar, we have many examples of technology improvements and technology getting to scale but it has largely been older technology that has been scaled in solar. Over the past decade we saw the transition from multi-crystalline to mono-crystalline solar cells which provide improved efficiencies. Companies in China were largely responsible for driving cost-out by rapidly scaling silicon production, single crystal ingot pulling and wafering. Driving cost out and scaling has placed China in a global leadership position with upwards of 80% market share in solar cells.
Perovskite technology is being developed around the world and while it is not immune to going through the technology scale up process, it has some key advantages when it comes to cost. The biggest advantage is that perovskites are an inexpensive material set and therefore overcome from the start one of the biggest challenges in the past, where generally to add efficiency you started with a higher material cost or production process cost. This holds true for the prior examples of mono-crystalline wafers and HJT solar technology.
Because the cost structure of Caelux’s Active Glass perovskite-based technology works out of the gate, the solution will be able to compete with incumbent technology and provide benefits to early adopters right away. This will allow the technology to scale where expensive technologies struggle to get a foothold in the market needed to scale.
Scaling with the Right Level of Disruption
Further, Caelux is taking the approach of disrupting solar — but not disrupting the billions of dollars of investment that have already been made in the solar supply chain. Oftentimes new technologies attempt to completely disrupt and fail to get to scale. Caelux is partnering with existing module manufacturers to become a supplier of Active Glass that goes into their existing production processes with minimal changes. We are allowing our technology to play a disruptive role by partnering rather than competing with the solar module manufacturing ecosystem.
Caelux’s first commercial product Caelux®One will enable Hybrid-Tandem™ solar modules that provide up to a 30% improvement in efficiency over today’s conventional silicon solar modules. Caelux applies its proprietary perovskite layer to the top glass used in conventional silicon solar modules, effectively turning the top glass into a power generation layer. This transforms the conventional module into a tandem module, boosting efficiencies, without major new CapEx investments in new factories or manufacturing equipment that other efficiency boosting technologies might require.
This improvement in efficiency is the single biggest lever to drive down cost as you have more power generation capacity with less land, less labor, and less costly components – think trackers and wiring. The economic value varies by market segment and region but the important point is that by the technology not costing more to produce than conventional technology, it will be able to play in all segments and regions globally and not be forced into a long-term niche market.
To scale up, Caelux is focused on proving the technology and following industry standard bankability protocols. We are working with early partners in all market segments and globally that see the value the technology can provide at scale as it dramatically changes solar economics. For many companies and their projects, Caelux technology will be the difference between a project penciling economically or never being built. In the US, CaeluxOne offers a needed bridge to a strong growth trajectory in a post-ITC landscape.
Delivering Value that Accelerates the Growth of Solar
At scale, by dramatically changing solar economics, Caelux Active Glass has the ability to help further accelerate the adoption of solar energy as it provides opportunities to solve key industry headwinds. Globally, power demand is surging and projected to continue to increase as economies develop, the world electrifies and we enter the AI era. Solar is already the fastest and oftentimes the cheapest option to provide additional power to the utility grid.
Older sites with valuable interconnection agreements and prime land can be repowered to much higher power densities driving additional value from these sites. And as commodity prices for land, labor, and materials rise, Caelux’s technology serves as a mechanism to drive down these costs continuing to keep solar in a leadership position as a new generation technology.
By amplifying solar in a way that drives down LCOE while integrating seamlessly into the existing supply chain and technology base, Caelux will further cement solar energy’s role in the global energy transition, meeting the world’s need for more power.
